


An Affair In Space

by traumschwinge



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Corporate Espionage, Emotionally Constipated Erik, Environmentalism, Getting Back Together, Honestly Charles What Are You Thinking, M/M, Reunions, Separations
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-01 00:16:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 40,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3998665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traumschwinge/pseuds/traumschwinge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is forced out of his father's company by his step father, so he turns to the only man he thinks he can for help and revenge - dangerous Erik Lehnsherr who's said to have gotten to the top of his corporation by murdering the previous owner. A shared history in their teen days connects them, but is it glue to keep them together or a still open wound keeping them apart? Charles offers stolen information on a cheap deal Markorp will depend on to ensure the success of their enterprises - and himself.</p><p>Set in a SciFi verse with interstellar corporations, the effects of ruthless exploitations of resources and the driven struggle to prove to be the better man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All my thanks to [Nextraordinaire](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nextraordinaire/pseuds/nextraordinaire). Darling I doubt I'd have been able to write this without you.

Charles stepped into the lobby of Phaver Etaireia directly from the taxi he had caught at NangLa's space port. With its sleek, clean looks it was no different from any other big company headquarter Charles had visited before. He hadn't expected so see so much modern design here, on one of the Outer Planets, but it wasn't all that much of a surprise. After all, Phaver Etaireia's late founder had been known for his taste, among other things. The receptionist asked him to wait for a moment when he told her his name and she'd confirmed that he indeed had an appointment with the current head of the company. She'd then called over building security, two muscular men that looked like they could just as well be mercenaries. Charles frowned at that. Now was this different from the Inner Planets he was used to, where anyone could be security, because security wore standard issue armored exo-skeletons.

He handed his blaster over without them having to ask first, but they still led him to a quiet corner and searched him, despite his cooperation. It made him wonder why this was. He hadn't heard anything too bad about NangLa's crime rates, after all. It was almost like the head Phaver Etaireia was expecting to be assassinated. That thought left a funny feeling at the pit of Charles' stomach.

After the thugs had searched him to their satisfaction, they led him to one the elevators going up to the top floor. Charles stepped in as soon as the door opened. Without a comment, the thugs followed him inside. The elevator was small, just barely big enough for the three of them. Again Charles had to wonder. What would it have been like if he were as broad-shouldered as the burly men security here seemed to hire exclusively. But of course, the elevator was intended to be this small. Just another security measure. Even if attackers would make it as far as the elevators, there was no way more than four people would fit in. Impressive, imposing, like the other security measures Charles had spotted around the headquarter of one of the most famous business men of this solar system, and, if rumours were to believed, a wanted criminal on the Inner Planets of the human-inhabited galaxy.

From all he had heard, Charles didn't doubt these rumors for one second.

At the top floor, a long hallway awaited them. Four more security guards were waiting there, their just barely legal blasters casually aimed at the elevator. Charles stepped into the hallway, with well practiced composure. He wasn't here to beg. He was here to offer a business deal, nothing more, nothing less. To his satisfaction, and a little relief, the security guards who'd ridden up with him remained in the elevator. Charles ignored the other four and marched directly over to the lone desk at the end of the hallway, the final obstacle between him and a private talk with a man he hadn't seen in more than fifteen years.

"Mr Lehnsherr will be ready to see you in just a moment," the secretary told Charles as he stopped in front of her desk.

Charles tilted his head in understanding. "Just tell me when it's time." He had expected this tactic. Not that it helped much, but he would have done the same. Unknowing what this was about, of course Erik would let him stew for a while, let him wonder how long he was supposed to wait, before he would let him in just when he started to feel restless. It worked so well on most people, especially when they didn't expect to be left waiting. But Charles didn't mind waiting. He had nowhere else to be that day, not even any important appointments to meet on the next. He hadn't even booked a flight back yet. He had time. All he needed was to talk to Erik.

After long minutes, the intercom on the secretary's desk pinged. "Mr Lehnsherr is now ready to see you," she told him. Her face remained expressionless.

"Thank you," Charles replied, already stepping around the desk to the door leading into Erik's office. The doors took entirely the wrong time to open, first reacting slowly as he stepped up to them and then sliding back faster than normal doors would. Small irritations like this were starting to get on Charles' nerves, as they were intended to.

Had he expected to find Erik mock-preoccupied like some cheap movie baddy, he would have been disappointed. Erik was waiting sitting behind his desk, yes, but he wasn't writing, nor had his chair turned with its back to the door. Instead, he had his eyes fixed on the door and then on Charles, as soon as the door closed behind him. The desk was empty, no paper and no holopad in sight. Charles wondered if he had been kept waiting so Erik could clear his desk, lest Charles would see anything he was working on. Considering what Charles knew and suspected about the business his old friend had taken over, it wasn't entirely unreasonable for Erik to do so.

"Welcome," Erik greeted him. "Please take a seat."

Charles sat down at the single chair in front of the desk. It was awkward to be this close and yet so far away from his former friend. The years had been good to him. He looked much more handsome than he had in his late teens, the kind of handsome wrinkles in the corner of his mouth and eyes only enhanced. If they had met under other circumstances, if they hadn't known each other, Charles could have fallen for Erik. As it was, Charles merely got irritated by the inhibitors Erik was wearing on his temples, protecting him from telepathy.

"Really, Erik, you distrust me this much?" he sighed. "You of all people should know I won't read your thoughts uninvited."

For a second, a smile appeared at the corner of Erik's mouth, accompanied by a gentle twinkle in his eyes. "I of all people should know you consider a secret kept from you as an open, standing invitation to snoop anyway."

Charles huffed, but he couldn't deny that Erik was right there. "Can we get to business, now, or is your desire for small talk not fulfilled yet?"

"My desire?" Erik raised an eyebrow. "It used to be you who would never stop with the small talk, not even for a little while, unless..." Erik looked conflicted. "Have you changed this much? You look just the same."

"Fifteen years are a long time," Charles sighed. "I see you aren't a thug anymore. And you look like you don't have to wonder where you're getting your food from for every single meal. Not that you look fat, I mean, you look, well, good. Healthy. It's a change."

Erik gave a long, slow shrug at that. "What can I say, you were right about me," he sighed. "Getting my revenge changed me. But not for the worse, as you can see. I did well by taking over most of his property after his death, and even better controlling it." He smiled without any real humor. "You wouldn't be here otherwise. So, Charles, why exactly are you here? All you told me in that mail was you were looking for a partner, for some kind of deal. Now what, exactly, is it that you're offering?"

Charles bit his lip, thinking about all the phrases and explanations he had prepared before he came, but each and every one of them sounded so shallow now, even in his own mind, that he couldn't say any out loud. "I offer you something that will get both of us in trouble should you accept. I'll probably get in trouble for coming alone."

"Well, I am trouble, to most people in the Inner Planets at least, so just spit it out, Charles." Erik waved his hand impatiently.

Taking a deep breath to calm his nerves, Charles said, "I'm here to offer you inside information to use against Kurt Marko and his company. I know you're his competition, at least in some fields. So, who else should I turn to?"

Suddenly, Erik looked much more interested, even though he was frowning. "But, by giving me this information, wouldn't you be hurting yourself? If I recall correctly, your father's company has been taken over by Marko's corporation years ago. So why is it that you're just now turning against him?" That Kurt Marko had turned Charles' life a living hell over the past twenty years went unspoken between them.

"My mother died, two months ago," Charles said, flatly. He ignored the little huff from Erik. It wasn't like he was still grieving her. In a way, she had died years ago, even before he'd met Erik the first time. Knowing what he did, that short sentence was all explanation Erik would need.

Erik nodded. "I see. But what do you expect me to do with the information you provide? Ruin him? Charles, that'll cost more, much more than any inside information is worth. I can't take that risk in good conscience just on the word of somebody I haven't seen in more than a decade."

"But the information is that good!" Charles protested. He pulled his holopad out for Erik to see, but was stopped with a quick gesture.

"I don't want goods I haven't paid for yet, Charles," Erik growled. "So put that thing away again. I didn't say I wasn't interested."

"But I don't have much else to offer," Charles sighed. He felt deflated. "I can't make you trust me," he added. All the arguments he had had, everything he'd prepared for, he hadn't expected Erik to shoot him down because he wasn't willing to take the risk of using insider information against one of his rivals.

"I'd never have guessed you'd give up this easily." Erik shook his head. "No, I didn't mean you should convince me this instant. I meant, you should stay, possibly, if you'd want that, as my employee rather than an old friend. For a while, at least. Maybe until I fulfilled my part of the deal?"

"Your employee," Charles echoed.

Erik shrugged. "Well, the position of my personal telepath is free, for example."

Charles gave Erik a flat look. "You just said you didn't trust me anymore." He would have outright glared at him, if that hadn't sent the wrong message entirely.

"We all know these" Erik tapped the inhibitor on his right temple. "Help only that much. I'd rather have a telepath I at least know by my side. And, well, it would work out for you as well, wouldn't it? You'd know when I'd be stalling the final blow to keep you, for example. Of course, the job comes with free food and housing, in an own suite next to mine and about the same meals I get. If you want to."

"But..." Charles shook his head. No time to beat around the bush. "I don't trust you either."

"Perfect," Erik nodded. "Much more sensible than you were fifteen years ago. But you need me, Charles, I can see it in your eyes. Frankly, you need me more than I need you. So, I'm willing to gamble big here for the moment, but not willing to wait long for your call, old friend."

"Erik... What happened between us was fifteen years ago. You can't just base this decis-"

"I'm not basing my decision to buy your information off you on what happened or didn't happen between us in the past," Erik hissed. "Nor am I asking to employ you because we once were something. I'm making an offer in the best interest of my business. And that's as what you should treat it. Don't think for one second there aren't precautions taken should you change your mind anywhere down the road. This, Charles, is the only warning you'll get, because we once were friends: The only thing more in danger than the oh so just law of the Inner Planets in this solar system are the lives of those crossing me."

A few moments of silence passed between them. Charles wished he knew he what Erik was thinking. He wasn't as willing to play with stakes as high as his own life. But that was it, wasn't it? By coming here alone, he already had gambled with his life, was betting it on a chance against his step father. To turn back now wouldn't change anything. By the time he'd contacted Erik, he had known that most bridges to the Inner Planets were burnt. "Fine," he sighed. "But I need more than just the promise of free reign in protecting your mind. I want our agreement in writing, without any technical tempering, something of substance."

For one second, Charles thought Erik would blow him off and tell him to get lost if he didn't want to agree to his offer. But instead, Erik reached into the drawer of his desk and pulled out two stacks of paper copies. He handed them to Charles. "I hope you'll forgive me for taking the liberty to already prepare this contract," he smirked. "All you have to do now" he summoned a pen and let it hover in the air before Charles' face. "Is sign."

Charles snatched the pen and started to read over the contract. It sounded legit enough, and he couldn't see any traps or double edges. Erik left him the time to read in silence, more courtesy than Charles had ever expected to be granted. Still, when he finally signed both copies of the contract and then passed them over for Erik to do the same, he heard a small sigh of relief from Erik.

"All done?" Charles asked. "When do I start?"

"Now," Erik replied, holding out his hand. "So why don't you show me the information you deem so important?"

Charles passed the holopad over to Erik, who accepted it awkwardly with his left hand. His right was too busy taking off the inhibitors. Suddenly, Charles could feel the familiar mind of the man before him. Even if it hadn't been his job, his duty now to go into this mind and wrap his telepathic senses all around him, Charles would have done so anyway. There had been only little time over the past fifteen years when he hadn't missed this mind.

 _Hello there. Finally,_ he spoke into Erik's mind, which greeted him with familiar warmth. He couldn't help but send a small burst of warmth and adoration right back at Erik, before he remembered that those fifteen years had in fact happened.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


For the rest of the afternoon, Charles stayed with Erik in his office. When Erik decided it was time for him to head home, he took Charles down to the building's garage with him. Erik drove them home himself, in a sleek, black speeder that went well with the image of the head of some sort of shady corporation. Unlike the speeders Charles was used to from the Inner Planets, the speeders here had the passenger area closed off from the outside world, the doors locking airtight, Charles guessed from the sound they made. On an over-industrialized world like NangLa, everyone who could afford it avoided breathing unfiltered air at all cost.

"So, how do you like it here?" Erik asked during the drive. He was taking the long way, Charles had noticed, purposefully missing turns and sometimes changing direction for no obvious reason.

Charles shrugged. "It's like any other world run by interplanetary companies I've seen," he said diplomatically. He had no idea how attached Erik had grown to his chosen home world and didn't dare to dig for it in his memories.

At the very least, his reply made Erik laugh. "This entire planet is one big, dirty barrel of toxic waste," he told Charles. "First, they dug up the entire planet and took out anything that was remotely worth something and then they terraformed what was left of it so they could build mills and plants in some sort of hyper-industrialization frenzy. That was about 50 years ago and you can see the outcome right here." Erik jerked his head at the tinted windows.

"And where do you fit into the picture, I wonder?" Charles hadn't just imagined the hint of resent in Erik's voice just now. It colored his thoughts as well. "Your company isn't trading in any of this planets main industries. At least, not anymore. Did you just do your math and decided moving was too expensive?"

"Ah, so you did your research on me." Erik hummed. "We're still doing good business here, albeit more that of a service provider, really. Filtered water, local grown food, garbage disposal, that sort of service."

Charles blinked at Erik. "I honestly can't tell whether you just admitted being a mobster or not."

It took Erik a while to answer, mostly because he was laughing so much. "I didn't mean that kind of garbage. That's in the past, I promise. I meant we buy waste off the plants here, recycle what we can and then sell it back to the mills at twice our investment. It's cute how dumb some of the local mill owners are, really. But we're still cheaper than importing new materials, so it works out for them as well, I guess."

Charles studied his old friend's face for a long while then. The thoughts that had come to Erik's mind while he had been talking were curious and unfamiliar, but the determination that came with them was so very Erik at the same time. At long last, Erik was growing uncomfortable with his stares. "What is it?" he sighed.

"I just never took you as someone so interested in saving the world," Charles laughed his insecurity away. "Maybe, I was wrong about you."

For a brief moment, Erik took his gaze of the street to search Charles' eyes. "You weren't," he said with conviction. "You were right about me. Back then at least."  _If you hadn't told me to my face that I needed a plan for the time after I reached my goal,_  Erik told him over their connection wrapped in a wave of affection.  _I wouldn't be here today._

The last few minutes of the drive passed by in silence. Charles didn't know what else to say and Erik concentrated on the road again. The drive ended in another garage under another highrise. They got out and Erik led the way to the elevator, just like he had at his office. But this time, he stopped there without calling the elevator. A moment later, Charles felt him reach out with his powers to pull down the elevator without electric assistance.

"Would you like to stay at my place for a bit, old friend?" Erik asked, mentally adding,  _You don't have to, your own flat is ready and should be stocked with food, too._

 _Did you just invite me for dinner? I'm not seventeen anymore,_  Charles chuckled. "I'd like to stay over for a bit, yes," he said out loud.

The elevator doors opened and they stepped inside. Charles could feel how Erik started to move the elevator up with his powers. "I didn't say that to charm you," Erik chided. Just like he always had, he kept his feelings walled off tightly from Charles. As a teen, it had been difficult to understand, but Charles had long since learned that people liked to keep complicated or unwelcome feelings to themselves.

"I know," Charles sighed. "But I appreciate good company with my dinner. As do you."

"True." Erik tilted his head. "We're almost there. I'm asking you to keep the personal communication out loud to a minimum. Our flats should be save, as is this elevator. But we should figure out an explanation for our acquaintanceship. I'd prefer if as few people as possible knew about our past relationship."

Charles nodded. It seemed reasonable. He had made himself target enough by making his own enemies, he didn't need the added trouble of having Erik's enemies coming after him as well.

"What's for dinner?" Charles asked as they walked the few steps from the elevator to Erik's flat. Charles noticed only two other doors on the level, one of them obviously leading to the emergency staircase.

Erik shrugged. "I'm sure we'll find something. I usually prepare my food on my own, you know, so we're only bound by whatever I can find in the kitchen."

 _How many people have tried to kill you since we've last seen each other?_  Charles wondered.

At first, there was no reply, but when Erik had secured the door behind them, he said, very quietly, "Too many. Less in the recent years, but it's still only too common to risk anything. My former employer still has more than one friend around here." He looked at Charles and smiled. "But frankly, I simply enjoy cooking. It only helps that this preference makes me also sound more paranoid than I am."

Charles nodded blankly. He took his time to look around the room they had just entered. The hallway looked perfectly normal, with a few framed, nondescript pictures on the walls and a small table with a decorative ornament on top of it at one side. Metal, of course. No doubt to be handily available whenever Erik needed a weapon in a hurry.

Erik had left Charles in the hallway, taking off shoes and his jacket and leaving all of it on a stand by the door. It had revealed not only two blasters, one in a shoulder holster and the other in one around his waist, but also a very tight fitting shirt that left not much about Erik's torso to the imagination. Well, maybe the color of his nipples, but that wasn't something Charles wanted to dwell on for too long. Besides, if memory served him right he already knew that one.

"You can wait for the food in the living room, just down the hall," Erik called from deeper inside the apartment. "And take off your shoes. I don't want you to drag dirt everywhere."

Charles did as he was told, before he wandered down the hallway. The living room looked cosy, like someone actually lived there. It was quite a shock. Back when they had been friends, any of Erik's dwellings had looked so sparse, so spartan. They had only been places where he crashed, not homes. For a second, Charles felt like he was invading on something much too private. He wondered if it would be too much to ask whether Erik was still single.

"Are you very hungry?" Erik called again. Charles send back a vague feeling of not very hungry but willing eat.

He was left to his own devices for a while. Erik was too busy in the kitchen to pay him much attention, even though their connection was still too new to be entirely at the back of Charles' mind all the time. Not for the first time, Charles wondered if all this had been a good idea. At this rate, most of his days for an unknown period of time would be spent in stand-by, waiting until Erik needed him, or wanted his company, or... something. It would be easier if either of them knew what they had been way back when they were young. They hadn't been friends, not quite. There had been too many other feelings, too many complicated circumstances. Looking back, Charles wondered how it would have played out between them if only they'd been older.

"Erik?" Charles knocked at the frame of the kitchen door before he entered. Erik's mind had felt so deep concentration he just had to announce his presence. "I was thinking."

"About what?" Erik asked, without looking up from the pan he was currently poking.

"About what if you told all the people you don't want to know as what you employ me that I'm your lover?" Charles asked. He was watching Erik carefully and monitoring his thoughts too, so he didn't miss how his shoulders tensed and the sudden spike of panic at his words.

"Absolutely not," Erik replied without missing a beat.

"Why not?" Charles leaned against the door frame. He was being deliberately calm about this, just because he knew an irritated Erik was easier to talk into plans he didn't like.

"Because that would make you an ridiculously high profile target to any of my enemies," Erik snapped. "You're insane!"

Charles rolled his eyes. "Nobody in their right mind would believe it anyway. You're not the kind of person to just walk around and announce your relationships. So."

"That wouldn't stop anyone from attacking you just to find out if maybe for once, I changed M.O." Erik growled.

"I can defend myself, I have done so for years," Charles replied.  _And only one other living person knows about my telepathy, I'll be fine as long as we keep it a secret. Inhibitors can only do so much against me, we tried this before and I'm stronger now,_  he added, straight to Erik's mind. It took a lot of willpower not to nudge Erik into reaching the right decision.

Erik took a long time to reply. For a moment, Charles even thought he had turned his attention back to the food entirely, but then Erik just switched off the stove and turned around, arms crossed in front of his chest. "I'll agree," Erik growled. "But only on one condition. Admit, that with all that history between, neither of us can ever be sure where to draw the line between ruse and truth there."

"I loved you back then," Charles admitted. "So, of course there's history. But... we both changed. It was half our lives ago. I don't think I could love you just now. Still, that's something nobody but us has to know, right?" He sighed. "I hope you're happy now."

Erik shrugged. "I'm happy enough, at least." Charles had no idea whether it was true or not, as Erik had walled off his feelings against him again. It would have been no trouble to break through those defences, not for a telepath of Charles' strength, but his own principles kept him from it. Or maybe he was just afraid of what he might find.

With a flick of his wrist, Erik let a cabinet swing open and levitated two metal plates out. "Let's eat." It didn't sound much like a suggestion, more like an order. Charles knew the tone. Food, it seemed, was still a way for Erik to compartmentalize his worries away until he could do something about them. Charles smiled at that.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Dinner was a quiet affair, not that Charles minded all that much. The food was good, even better than it had smelled. It seemed like running interstellar corporations wasn't the only talent Erik had honed in the past years. Charles could get used to this.

"So," Erik said, once both their plates were eaten clean. "As my faux lover, I assume you'd want to stay over rather than sleeping in your perfectly fine own flat?"

Charles snorted. "Are you trying to kick me out? On the night of our reunion after long years of separation?" He wished all the hurt in his voice was just for show. But in truth they hit a little too close to home.

"No, I'm just saying I'm not sleeping on the couch and my bed is hardly big enough for two. Unless, of course, you want to cuddle," Erik smirked. "But there's a really nice bed waiting for you just one door over."

Charles shook his head. "You'll not talk me out of the idea this easily."

All his words did were make Erik shrug. "It was worth a try. After all, you seem to have kept your immunity against all reason. Good to know your skull is still as thick as ever."

"Erik, if you don't want to go with the ruse, just say it," Charles sighed. He was getting mixed signals from Erik over their telepathic link. A big part of Erik seemed to be dead set on telling Charles to take this idea and shove it. But there was another part, a more quiet part, that wanted to keep Charles' as close as possible, but it was tinted with cold and dark feelings that made him recoil from there without inspecting in too closely.

It took Erik unusually long to work out an answer. "I'd rather tell everyone the truth, that you're now working for me as a telepath, than going with your stupid ruse," he said, finally, very softly.

"Why not?"

"Because you're not thinking this through. I won't even pretend to begin to understand where you got that idea from in the first place, but I'll not go along with your idiocy. If you want to get yourself killed, and from all I heard about your activities lately, it looks like that to me, fine, by all means, go ahead. But don't make me complicit." Erik might have looked calm on the outside, but inside of him, a familiar, stormy rage was stirring, the very one that had driven Erik back when they'd first met. The plates and cutlery started to rattle. "Or are you trying to get into my bed so you could... what? Slip into my life and then my mind so you can alter it to match your own will, one small step at a time every time I'm asleep so nobody'll notice? I am trying to trust you, I even took off the inhibitors, and you're just acting more and more suspicious." A wave of hurt pride and bruised feelings rolled over Charles, almost nauseating. Erik had said something else, but Charles hadn't been able to hear it, too busy to keep his head from spinning under the onslaught of feelings.

"Can you please calm down?" he ground out. "Just, a little, please?" Charles could feel the table slip away, before he realized that he was falling, his mind overwhelmed with the strong, contradictory feelings Erik was still projecting at him. Erik was up in a heartbeat, just in time to save Charles from crashing into the hard floor. The feelings projected at him died down.

"Charles?" Erik asked, voice suddenly soft again. "Are you alright?"

"I might need a moment," Charles admitted. He shouldn't have opened himself to Erik this fast. He should have known better. After years and years of being surrounded by almost exclusively people who wore inhibitors, he should have know that he would need time to handle a mind so completely open to him. He should have, but he hadn't.

Now, the storm of feelings inside Erik had died down to a gentle hum of worry, with not much space for anything else. "It wasn't the food, was it?" Erik said and tried to smile.

"No." Charles frowned up at Erik. He still hadn't let him go. "Why did you get so angry at me?" It had been about more than trust or distrust, he could feel it. Yet, he was unable to name the problem.

Erik shook his head. "Not now. You look like you need rest."

"But I want to know," Charles protested. "Please. I don't want you to be angry with me, not like that."

For a moment, Erik averted his eyes. "It was stupid. It's nothing, Charles, I'll have forgotten about it in the morning," he informed Charles. Gentle hands on his shoulders helped Charles to sit back up and lean against one leg of the table.

"Do you really think I would change your mind in your sleep?" Charles hated to ask this, but he had to. If Erik was serious about this accusation, he had no idea how to look him in the eye ever again.

Erik shrugged. "I didn't, or I wouldn't have been so willing to hand my mind over to you." He shook his head. "But then you went ahead and asked me to act as your lover just to admit two minutes later that you couldn't love me. You have to admit, that is rather confusing."

Charles squeezed his eyes shut. Oh! "I meant that I don't even know you anymore," he admitted. "It wasn't meant to mean forever. It only was a not right now. Or would you be ready to pick up where you've left off with somebody who left you fifteen years ago?"

Erik nodded, more to himself than in answer to Charles' question. His mind didn't give away much anymore, his feelings all reigned back in. Charles would have needed to dig, to find out what he was thinking, but he felt nowhere near up to that task.

"You shouldn't stay here tonight," Erik eventually declared. Charles was feeling better then, but still not good enough to get up on his own and walk the short distance over to the other flat.

"I'll need a little assistance, then," Charles sighed. To his surprise, Erik helped him up without hesitation and let him lean against his taller frame.

"Like this?" Erik asked, one of his arms going around Charles' shoulders to stabilize him. They walked over to the other flat close like this, with Erik opening the doors on the way with his powers, his arm holding Charles close the entire time. He only let go of Charles when they were standing at the door to what Charles assumed would be his bedroom.

"Good night, Charles," Erik told him. "Rest well, I might need you tomorrow."

Before Charles could realize what was going on, Erik leaned down to press a chaste kiss against his lips. "This," Erik whispered, his lips still close to Charles'. "Cancels out the hurt you caused me tonight. At least some of it. I never stopped loving you, Charles. You might want to remember that."

With those words, Erik pulled away and turned around, leaving Charles shocked and confused, but with a warm feeling bubbling up in his chest.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, Charles woke to the holo screen of the intercom console next to his bed flashing brightly and playing some atrocious ringing noise that was clearly designed to get even the dead out of their beds in the morning. He cursed whoever had come up with that. It took him some fumbling to turn it of, before he could get out of bed. He couldn't remember having set an alarm, much less so that he'd known the time he should have set it on. Erik had been rather vague on what working for him would be like, after all. What Charles  _could_  remember, however, was how they had parted the night before. The memory of it was enough to make him wish he could be swallowed by the ground, especially since he'd have to face Erik again, most likely very soon.

But, instead of waiting for supernatural assistance to rid the world of his stupidity, Charles chose to do the adult thing, shower, dress and then go to the kitchen to hunt down something to eat. He'd just found the toast and some fruit in the freezer, when there was a knock on the door to his apartment and the already familiar again brush of Erik's mind against his.  _Come in_ , Charles projected back at him. He could hear the door unlock, open and close again, so he called, "I'm in the kitchen". Erik joined him there half a minute later.

He was already dressed, although less impeccable than the day before. He was now wearing a sturdy looking working shirt and functional trousers, his whole appearance changed from "head of one of the biggest corporations in the solar system" to "probably the foreman of the local mill". And he was also wearing inhibitors on his temples again.

Charles frowned. He'd just been able to feel Erik's mind. So... He reached out and found that he could still touch Erik's mind. "What...?" he murmured.

Erik tapped one of the inhibitors guessing what Charles was getting at. "Spares," he grinned. "Broke them myself. They should be enough to conceal why you're actually working for me for a few days. I don't need every crook on this forsaken planet to know I got a telepath working as my PA if I can help it."

Charles nodded. He could see where Erik came from there. "Do we have to leave right away?" he asked, looking mournfully at the small breakfast he'd just assembled.

"I actually came over to ask if you wanted to have breakfast but I see you've found some for yourself already," Erik said, still smiling. So, apparently, they were not talking about the previous night, ok, Charles could do that.

"You could still join," Charles offered. "You probably know where everything is better than me anyway."

Erik nodded and set out to hunt down some more items, plates and cutlery. Breakfast was a fast, but nonetheless pleasant matter. They joked like old friends would who hadn't just reunited after not seeing each other for fifteen years in which they had no word at all from each other.

"So," Erik started when he was almost finished with his breakfast. "Here's what I'm going to do today and where you come in."

Charles looked up from his own food and fixed his eyes on Erik to signal he was listening.

"I'm going to visit a supplier, that's why I'm dressed like this and later on, a customer will drop by my office," Erik explained. "We'll be talking business on both occasions and that's where I need you. You can bypass the inhibitors without being noticed or breaking them, right?"

Charles nodded. "The models used here shouldn't be a problem." He wasn't too happy to admit it, but he'd done it before, even with some of the state of the art models, though those were much more difficult to crack and had him pass out once or twice before. "You're aware if that it's very illegal, Erik?" he still said.

"As is the sale of inside information, Charles." Erik smirked. Charles rolled his eyes. "But if it makes you feel better, I'll take care that nobody will dare to get you in trouble over it."

"This is what I signed up for?" Charles sighed.

Erik nodded. "Pretty much, yes."

"Okay, fine." One of the reasons he had been lying awake last night had been that he'd agreed to work as a living polygraph. "But what will you tell them why I'm there?"

"Depends on how sure you are you can play dumb," Erik shrugged.

Charles tilted his head. "I can try? Why?"

"I was thinking about your plan last night," Erik admitted. "It might not be as stupid as I thought at first. But I'd rather have them think I pay a pretty boy to be my trophy boyfriend or something like that, than having anyone assume you could actually mean anything to me."

Charles looked unconvinced. "Are you sure?" he asked, reaching out for Erik's mind at the same time.

Erik nodded, his mind also set on giving off a general feeling of "I am sure I can handle everything". "I'm fine," he assured him. "I've realized a long time ago that we'd most likely never work out anyway and I'm old enough to accept that by now. I would have raged at his reality when I was younger. But..." He shrugged.  _The thing is just_ , his thoughts whispered to Charles' telepathy.  _I need to want you, still, or I wouldn't be who I am today._  "So, what do you say?"

Very reluctantly, Charles nodded. "I think I can do that."

"Good, then..." Erik gave Charles a once over that made Charles realized that he'd simply slipped into his clothes from the day before again. "Would you mind dressing the part? I doubt I could convince anyone that I've some sort of old sage fetish."

Charles rolled his eyes. "If you tell me where I should find the clothes for it?"

"I'm pretty sure my assistant didn't just stock the kitchen, but also the bedroom and bath," Erik replied. He got up and started to clear the table, seeing as they were both done eating. "And hurry a little, I'm expected to arrive there in about an hour."

With a sigh, Charles vanished into his bedroom, only to find that Erik's assistant had indeed stocked the closet there with some clothes his size, some of which looked very presentable and like they were meant for normal days at an office. But there were also a few shirts and a pair of trousers that looked almost scandalous. Figuring that it was about what Erik had meant for him to wear in his role as a trophy boyfriend, Charles took the trousers and what shirt looked best without looking too respectable with it and changed.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


The outfit Charles picked in the end got an appreciating nod from Erik, but no more comment than that. Charles would have preferred any comment over the looks Erik shot him whenever he thought he wasn't looking. He should just take this as a compliment for the outfit and leave it at that. Erik liking it was the whole point, he reminded himself. It still left him feeling a little uncomfortable and very conscious.

"...should I expect you to touch me in front of others?" Charles asked when they were in Erik's speeder. He felt stupid for asking but he would need the warning. Before he'd get the notice from Erik's mind about ten seconds before it actually happened, preferably.

"Only if you're okay with me touching," Erik replied. He was keeping his eyes fixed on the street. "We could just pretend I wasn't interested or comfortable with it if you're not."

Charles thought it through for a second. He wasn't entirely comfortable with Erik showing any kind of affection for him, and it had nothing to do with any danger that it might put him into. It was more that he'd need to work out his own feelings beforehand. And, well, he was also slightly worried that Erik would hurt himself by doing so. "Some kisses on the cheek and touches above the belt would be necessary for the ruse," Charles said slowly. "I'm sure I can handle that much."

"Good." Erik nodded.  _Just tell me when you're uncomfortable and I'll stop right away,_  he added.

"Thank you." Charles smiled. For anyone else, he probably wouldn't be able to do this. Erik reached over to pat his knee and hummed some sort of affirmation, before he withdrew again just in time before it could become awkward.

 

*** * ***

 

From the outside, the factory Erik parked in front of made it already abundantly clear why Erik had dressed the way he had. Charles looked down at his own clothes and had a lot more doubts about them all of a sudden. "Are you sure I should come in with you?" he protested weakly.

Erik handed a respiratory mask and a set of inhibitors to Charles and told him he'd be fine. Charles eyed the inhibitors wearily. "Put them on. They're broken, just like mine. Trust me. I need you to be able to use your telepathy, after all," Erik tried to coax him. "Please? And don't forget the mask, you really don't want to breath anything in, especially the air here."

Fingers shaking a little, Charles took the first inhibitor and stuck it to his temple. He couldn't feel any function. That was a relief, the last time he'd had to wear inhibitors he had felt an effect immediately. They had to be truly, completely broken. He stuck on the second one and there was no effect either. Their weight was a bit uncomfortable, though. He took the mask and put it on as well, making sure he had his mouth and nose completely covered so no air could bypass the mask.

Erik waited for him to be done with it, having put on his own mask already. Only when Charles was ready to go, he opened the door of his speeder and stepped outside. Despite the mask, the air still felt scratchy in his throat, uncomfortable to breathe. Charles could only hope that the mask was keeping the worst of the toxic air out, no matter how unused he was to wearing it.

They entered through the front doors. Inside, the air wasn't much better than outside, but at least it was clear enough to see the other side of the room, albeit through some visible smog. A young woman was waiting in the entrance hall, she, too, wearing a mask. Erik went straight for her, greeting her as if they knew each other--which they probably did--and chatting a little bit, before he casually introduced Charles as his boyfriend which made Charles blush a little, but the girl only gave him a brief once over and apparently filed him away as eye candy at best and possible escort at worst. She wasn't wearing inhibitors, so Charles could hear her thoughts clearly. He didn't like them much. But that wasn't the point, so he didn't say anything.

The young woman led Erik to the office area. Charles simply trailed behind, looking around the place a bit, because nobody seemed to pay him any attention. At least in this regard, Erik seemed to be right.

_Tell me if you see anything interesting,_  Erik chuckled over their telepathic connection.  _And try to look a bit less... well, intelligent. She might catch up on you otherwise._

_She really won't._  Charles huffed a little and just to spite Erik, he caught up to him and looped his arm through Erik's. "It's so dirty here, darling," Charles said in his best fake whine, the one he'd heard so often from girls at the parties his parents had forced him to attend. "You promised me we'd do something fun!"

He could hear Erik laugh in his mind, but out loud, he answered in a hushed voice, "Shush, baby, we'll be done soon and then we can do all the fun things you want. But business comes first." He even shot the woman an apologetic look.

She merely shrugged and knocked at the door she'd led them to. There was a muffled voice from inside and she slipped in, leaving Erik and Charles alone for a moment. "You can wait here for me if you're too bored by business talk, baby," Erik told him, projecting a grin, that bastard. Charles send the mental equivalent of a frown back.

"I don't like this place," Charles complained instead of giving in. "I want to stay near you."  _If you don't stop calling me baby soon, I'll start calling you daddy,_  he threatened.

They only had to wait for another minute, before a man in well made, possible bespoke, clothes stepped out and greeted Erik. Erik freed himself from Charles with gentle force, before he returned the greetings and a short exchange of pleasantries followed. Charles watched the room around them, his nose wrinkled in fake disdain. In truth, he was paying close attention to what the man told Erik and the surface of the man's thoughts through the inhibitors he was wearing. Charles was just thankful that the model was one of the less well made ones.

The tour through the factory itself was brief, it took them only about half an hour, even though Erik was asking about details and specifics all the time. Apparently, Charles had a lot to learn about Erik's business. He hadn't even imagined that buying waste was this serious or took all that much preparation.

What did take long, though, were the negotiations afterward. At least, they were back in the man's office, which had it's own air purifier, so they could take the masks off. Charles made the mistake of looking at the masks once white now almost black inside and shuddered.

He listened to everything that was said, while doing his best to look bored and detached. Once in a while, he would give Erik mental nudges when he was sure the factory owner was trying to lie to Erik, or bend the truth, but otherwise, he did his best not to get involved all that much. After about an hour, he decided it would be for the best to lean against Erik and pretend to sleep, like any trophy boyfriend would to for sure.

In the end, Erik got the factory owner down to a price Charles thought was frankly scandalous, because he knew--and he knew Erik knew--it was much lower than what he bought was worth. But apparently it was all in the factory's best interest, as Erik informed him, so Charles had to concede. It wasn't like he could speak up against it anyway.

Back in the car, Charles still couldn't help but ask, "So, from now on I'll help you make barely moral deals with people you could ruin like that?"

"He'd pay three times the price I pay him if he let his waste be picked up by anyone who doesn't recycle it to sell it on," Erik gave back. "So where's the harm if I make a little more profit? He's making some too, where he'd otherwise have to cut losses. Everyone's happy."

Charles shook his head. "Sometimes, I really don't get you. How did you get so... so ruthless and profit oriented and..." He shrugged helplessly.

"Business like?" Erik helped out. Charles could feel another word at the tip of his tongue but he wasn't sure what it was from Erik's surface thoughts alone. "Well, with the right role model, everyone can be like that. Even you."

Charles shook his head. "Thanks, I think, I'll pass."

He couldn't decipher the look Erik shot him in lieu of a reply. It didn't help that Erik had walled his feelings off again as well. Charles let out a long sigh. Did that mean he'd said the wrong thing again?

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Erik remained silent for the entire drive to his office building. Once or twice, Charles tried to get him talking again, but eventually, he gave up on it and watched the buildings outside pass by. He knew, somewhere on this planet, there were no factories with large settlements for their workers around them, right next to other factories, making up one gigantic city like here. But those places seemed far away. From space it had seemed like most of the planet wasn't like this, it had looked like a normal, earth-like planet. However, when he had landed on the planet, he had seen some green at the far horizon, that had vanished quickly as the ground came closer, until there had been nothing but manmade structures as far as one could see in any direction. There was not much green between the houses either. Some plants were struggling, sometimes in cracks of the pavement, sometimes clinging onto the walls of buildings for their lives, but all looked like they were about to die, their leaves gray with dust and limp from the toxic air.

"Does it ever rain here?" Charles wondered out loud. This, finally, was what made Erik react. Charles could feel the uneasiness radiating off him, even before he answered. "Rarely. And you don't want to be outside then. It melts...stuff," Erik said vaguely.

"Stuff?" Charles raised an eyebrow. "What kind of stuff?"

Erik was obviously uncomfortable with the topic. "Concrete," he finally said, staring at the street ahead. "Glass, stone. When the weather gets really bad, it hurts when the rain touches your skin. There are always so many damaged buildings after any rainstorm." He briefly looked over to Charles. "Should it ever rain while you're outside here, please stop everything you're doing and get to a shelter, understood?"

Charles swallowed, then nodded. "Why are people even living here?" he sighed.

"Most of them don't know any better," Erik said softly. His hands, however, tightened around the steering unit. "But that doesn't make it right for them to have to continue like this."

"But what can you do?" Charles sighed.

Erik only snorted at that. "What indeed?" In his mind, Charles found several vague and even some concrete ideas, all battling to be heard over the others, as if Erik wanted him to pick up on them. For a minute, Charles stared at Erik, before he turned his attention back to the world outside the window. He felt a little ashamed without knowing exactly why.

 

*** * ***

 

At the office building, Erik went straight up to his office, Charles trailing behind. If any of the employees they passed thought anything of it, nobody said anything. Most of them didn't even look at Charles. Erik nodded at his secretary as they passed by, before they were alone again in his office.

"I've some business to take care of alone," Erik informed Charles almost immediately. He glanced at the clock on the holopad on his desk. "But don't worry, there's somebody I wanted you to meet anyway. She'll take care of you while I don't have time."

"She?" Charles raised an eyebrow.

"My assistant," Erik clarified. "You'll like her." Just that moment, there was a ding from Erik's holopad. He grinned. "She's on her way up. Try to make a good impression on her, will you?"

Charles nodded dutifully, but he couldn't help wondering what would happen if he didn't manage to make a good impression on her. Erik sounded like he cared about her. She obviously was an important, trusted part of his life, if he even let her stock up a flat he would spend some time in without checking for hidden traps. It could be just as well that her assessment of his character could influence Erik for or against him. He didn't like that thought.

"Stop worrying so much," Erik sighed. He had sat down behind his desk and was now massaging the side of his head. "You're giving yourself and me a headache."

"Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to.." Charles started to apologise but Erik merely shook his head. "It's going to be fine," Erik assured him. "She'll better like you." He was smiling. "She knows enough about you to know that she'd better."

Charles couldn't help but feeling sceptical, even though he said nothing. When the office door opened not a minute later, a blue scaled girl with short red hair, wearing a smart white shirt and a black pencil skirt, walked in. She smiled briefly at Erik, some sort of nonverbal communication that wasn't telepathic going on between them for a few seconds, before she turned to Charles with a bright, professional smile that was just this side of too forced. "Hi, I'm Raven, Erik's assistant, and you must be Charles," she said, before she added, with a wink and a stage whisper, "He was talking a lot about meeting you yesterday."

Charles blushed. His mind, curse it, of course immediately had to jump to Erik's confession last night and he wondered how much she knew. Nonetheless, he returned her smile, "Nice to meet you. He said you were to take care of me while he worked on things he didn't want to tell me about?"

Erik cleared his throat at this point. " _He_  is still in the room with you," he reminded them. "But please, if you want to gossip, feel free to leave. I'll call for you when I'll need you. Raven, you know the schedule, so please take care to be at hand when our guest is supposed to arrive."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to kidnap him to the other side of the city, you know," she told him. "We'll be in my office, I think."

Erik nodded and with that, they were dismissed. Raven turned to leave. Charles, however, was reluctant to follow.  _Is it really okay to keep her from work?_  he pushed his doubts at Erik.  _Don't you need me?_  was the next thought, the one he couldn't stop from sending as well.

_Charles, I want to need you,_  Erik projected back at him.  _I chose to need you. But I don't need you around all the time. Don't worry, it's fine. She'll take good care of you while I do my work. It's her job, so to speak._

Raven was starting to look impatient holding the door open, so Charles hurried to follow her. He still protested Erik's decision to foist him onto her like that, though.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Raven led Charles to a big office two floors below Erik's. Beside a desk which must be Raven's working space, it held a small table with four comfortable looking armchairs around it. That was where Raven sat down. Charles followed her lead, sinking down onto the soft leather. He waited for her to say something, but for the first few minutes, all she did was studying him with an uncomfortably intense glare.

"You look nothing like i imagined you," she finally declared. Her mouth was drawn to a displeased, thin line. "Hair, eyes, lips, he got that much right, but the rest is all wrong."

"Excuse me?" Charles was shocked by her words. "How am I supposed to look, in your opinion?"

She shrugged. "More... perfect, you know? Richer. More like a saint. Less like a desperate man or somebody trying to sell their body because that's all they have, at least."

"The outfit was Erik's idea," Charles protested, because he couldn't really say anything against her other points. "And I'm not selling my body to him!"

"I know." She narrowed her eyes. Her voice became low and dangerous. "If you would, you wouldn't be here. Erik is an idiot, but he still has people watching his back. I hope we're clear on that. So if you're playing some game with him and I, or some other people, notice, don't expect to be sticking around much longer." Warning issued, she leaned back in her seat and looked at Charles again. "And, if you know what's good for you, never take fashion advice from Erik, ever again. The only reason  _he_  looks good is because we finally convinced him to stick to one tailor and just let them do the picking for him."

Charles had a hard time keeping up with the change of pace and topic, so his smile came belated and forced. His mind was still struck on her threat. A part of him was happy for Erik to have found people who had his back like Raven seemed to have, but mostly, he was just terrified. As if it wasn't bad enough to be in danger for betraying his stepfather, now he was threatened over Erik's emotional well being. Thinking back to the young man he'd met when he was a teenager, Charles could only hope that the stability Erik seemed to have found was more than just an act.

When Charles didn't answer for a long while, Raven nudged him. "Cheer up, that was a standard issue warning for anyone coming too close to the boss." Her voice was still very businesslike, but her eyes had gone soft. "I hope you're aware he's in love with you, that's all. He might look competent, but on the emotional front he's so far from having his shit together as humanly possible."

Charles nodded. "He... Last night, he told me."

"But you didn't say it back," Raven added, as if she'd heard that story already. "So, can you tell me why? I promise I won't tell him."

"I fail to see how that's your business," Charles crossed his arms in front of his chest. He didn't even want to think about the why.

She searched his eyes, looked at him for a long moment and frowned. If he hadn't known better, Charles would have assumed she was a telepath as well. "You were in love with him, too, all back when, weren't you?" she demanded to know. "He didn't just make that up-"

"I... was," Charles said, with a helpless shrug. "And it's part of the reason why I came to him to ask for help. But... He changed, I changed. Fifteen years is a long time. People grow, people make decisions, people change in fifteen years." He didn't tell her about the circumstances of their parting all those years ago, didn't tell her how desperate he'd been for months to hear from Erik again and how he'd eventually learned to put his disappointment and loneliness aside and continue with his life, resigned to the fact that it was most likely a life without Erik.

"Please don't tell me you're into angry and crazy," Raven groaned.

"I never said that!" Charles protested. "I just... I might need some time to come to terms with who he is now. In relation to who I am now." He didn't even know why he was telling her even that much. But if he wanted to know why Erik had changed as he had, she might be one of the few who could answer him. He didn't want to ask Erik himself, not with how Erik looked at him every time they got close to the topic. "Is he...? He didn't think I came here just because I still, well, hoped there might be something?"

"Who knows," Raven shrugged, then sighed. "Listen, he's... I'm sure it's not unwelcome. He has hoped for you to come back. Sometimes, he talks a little too much about what he plans for the future and trust me, that future as he wants it needs you, or at least this idea he has of you. So, don't fuck this up, understand? If you need to break his heart, at any point, let him down gently, please?"

Charles bit his lower lip. She was asking him to let  _Erik_  down gently. Erik of all people. Even if it was true what she said about Erik's feelings for him, even if Erik meant what he had said the night before, Charles wasn't willing to accept it just yet. "If he's so in love with me," he huffed, instead of answering. "Then why is it that he looks at me like I kicked a puppy every time I say something that's not in line with his opinion?"

"Sidetracking already?" Raven smirked in a way she might have learned from Erik. It was all to knowing for Charles' liking. "Maybe it's because he's just as confused and unsettled by the man you've become than you're by the man he is now." She shrugged. "But unlike you, I can't look into peoples heads, so who am I to know." With this, she clapped her hands together. "Well, I've intruded on your private life enough for one day, I guess. I could force you to spit everything out, but that would be no fun now, would it? So, how about we find you some better clothes to wear? What's your excuse for being constantly around him again? Escort?"

"Trophy boyfriend," Charles grumbled, even though in truth he was happy to change the topic away from his feelings or not-feelings for Erik. "And Raven? Thanks for not, well." He shrugged. "It's obvious you don't like me but you still treat me ok, so, thanks for that."

She reached across the table to ruffle his hair. "No need to thank me," she was smiling now. "You're not the perfect idol I imagined but who ever lives up to the epics told about them? I only ask you for one thing: Prove it. Prove to me that you don't mean Erik harm. And... If you have it in you, show some enthusiasm for his plans for this planet, alright? He might not look like it, but he'd appreciate it."

"It's not like he's sharing them with me," Charles grumbled, but then he remembered what he'd seen in Erik's mind, the half-baked plans he'd almost, but not quite projected when they'd talked about rain. "But, it wouldn't be hard to show it. Some of his plans are lunatic, that's true, but some others, those which are more coherent anyway, are almost brilliant. ...do you think it would be okay to ask him about the plant research he's having done? About the ones that grow on vertical surfaces and filter bigger particles from the air?" The only reason Charles hadn't asked already was because he wasn't sure enough whether he should even know about it.

"Oh dear," Raven laughed. "Do it, by all means, but be prepared to have him ramble for hours. Sour rain and the air pollution are his favorite topics, aside from business in general, of course." She got up and indicated Charles to do the same. "Ready to get out of that atrocious outfit? I don't even know why I put these clothes into your wardrobe."


	3. Chapter 3

Raven dropped Charles off at Erik's office about two hours later. She had put her time with him to good use, first dressing him to her liking, in clothes that were a lot less scandalous but still brought out all his good features as she said, with tight fitting pants and a blue shirt that empathized the color of his eyes and could only be called decent because it was not quite sheer. Knowing fully well what the goal there was, Raven had assured Charles Erik would like it.

Charles had let her do as she pleased. He was too busy thinking about what Raven's insights and Erik's words the night before could mean for him, if they had to mean anything that was. He wanted them to mean something, at least if Erik had meant what he had said. It was one of the first realizations he'd come to, at the night before when he couldn't sleep. Fifteen years he had waited to hear those words spoken out loud. He wanted to hear them again, if possible. That was another one of the truths he had to accept.

The very least he could do was give Erik another chance. It wasn't like he wasn't to blame just as much that they'd never made contact again after Erik had left.

Erik's eyes lit up a little when he entered. "I see Raven has decided to dress you up to her tastes," he teased. "Sorry about that, but it was bound to happen at some point."

"I don't mind it all that much," Charles shrugged. For a second, he questioned the wisdom of his next words, before he added, "And she said you'd like it, so I saw no reason not to."

"I do like it," Erik hummed. "Very much. It suits you better than what you were wearing this morning."

Charles bowed his head. It was hard not to be swept off his feet by the happiness Erik was radiating, no matter how guarded and cautious Erik still was with it. He cleared his throat. "Uhm, where do you want me for the meeting with your customer?"

"On the couch over there," Erik nodded to the gray couch that was most likely there to be used for quick naps, or, if Erik still was anything like he'd been at nineteen, nights spent at the office because he'd forgotten to go home at some point. "You can pick up a holopad and read, if you want to. The less you look like you're listening in, the better. And, Charles?" He had gotten up and stepped around his desk. "You don't have to bow to my tastes if you don't want to."

Charles wanted to say that it was just about the deal they had anyway, but then stopped himself. Think first, talk after, he told himself. If he didn't mean what he said, he should at least not say anything that would hurt Erik. So, instead, he said, "I know. Thank you, Erik."

Charles picked up the holopad Erik handed to him. It was his own, which made Charles wonder what Erik had been doing with it and when he'd taken it in the first place, but he pushed the brief spike of worry aside for the moment.

The business contact arrived a few minutes after Charles had settled down. Erik was taking his sweet time before he told his secretary to let him in, a burly man with a frown on his face. Charles had been able to sense his mind from the minute he was told to wait, so angry that the poorly made inhibitors he was wearing couldn't keep any of it concealed .

It was obvious from both his words and body language that Erik didn't like the man very much, at least to Charles. The man himself seemed rather oblivious to it, brushing Erik's behaviour aside as a hard negotiator. As boring as it was to listen to the prices for building materials, Charles had to wonder what the man was building that Erik was so opposed to it that he was only willing to sell material to him for a staggering win margin. But the man was intent enough to buy from Erik not to notice and what doubts he had were crushed when Charles advised Erik to lie through his teeth and stroke the man's ego for a change.

All in all, it was a pretty easy deal, with only some of the details left for both companies' legal division to go over before the signing of a contract. Erik saw the man off, before he closed the door behind him and leaned against it. "I hate that guy," he sighed.

"Why don't you come over here and take a break?" Charles asked, patting the couch next to him. The holopad he had prented to be reading on was already forgotten on the small table before the couch.

Erik scuffled over to the couch. He dropped down heavy next to Charles, leaning against his shoulder. "It this okay?" he asked, voice soft and almost meek.

Instead of an answer, Charles put his arm around Erik. "I've been thinking about what you said last night, you know," he mumbled and then went on before Erik could say anything. "I'm cruel. I should have said it back, or at least said something."

Erik shook his head still resting against Charles' shoulder. "You should only say it if you mean it."

That advice prompted a small groan from Charles. "For years, I imagined seeing you again, telling you. And now I see you, I have every possibility to do it, but I don't say it. It's ridiculous. But... I feel like I don't know you anymore. And," he swallowed. "I want to change that. Sorry, I didn't give you a proper chance."

Now, Erik looked up at him. "I think I owe you the same apology. You're not a seventeen year old anymore," he sighed. "Gods know why I thought that."

"You still said you loved me," Charles huffed, but it was in good spirits.

"That I did," Erik mused. His arms snuck around Charles' waist and he pulled him closer. Charles let him, pretending not to notice it. "And I meant it. But I still feel put off whenever you say something I didn't expect."

"So that's why you're closing off against me sometimes?" Charles wondered.

Erik nodded. "I should be able to handle the dissonance between who you are and who you were a lot better."

For a brief moment, Charles returned the hug, pressing his face into Erik's hair. "Me too. You look like you've become such a fine man, but I can't help seeing the boy who left me whenever I look at you."

Erik didn't reply to this out loud. He merely nodded, sending some warm feelings at Charles that might indicate he shared the sentiment.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Erik spent some more minutes leaned against Charles, his eyes closed and his mind content. Charles had closed his eyes too and was absorbing what he could of Erik's warm feelings. It was nice. He could have stayed like this forever.

But eventually, Erik straightened again, stretching a little. He still had some work to do, he told Charles. If Charles wanted to help, there were always numbers to file away, boring work of an accountant. Charles had done this before, for his father's company while he still had a say in their decisions. It was one of the reasons why he knew so much about the illegal dealings. It wasn't like it was easy to hide any form of business earnings from an accountant after all. And Kurt hadn't wanted to hide any of it, not from Charles whom he thought he could bully easily into doctoring some numbers. Erik didn't mind him check the data of at least some departments of his corporation, so he left Charles to work on that, while he was busy himself.

It was late when Erik finally got up from his desk again, stretching the kinks out of his back and neck and told Charles to call it a day. Charles saved the annotated file he had been working on and put his holopad away. He hadn't even noticed how tired he'd gotten. Now that he had, however, it was hard to stifle a yawn.

Erik grinned at that. "We're about to head home," he informed Charles. He was just putting away everything on his desk, locking the drawers with his powers and turning off the holo screen. "Want to say Raven good-bye? She's still in her office."

Charles shrugged. He wouldn't mind seeing her again and he could tell that Erik wanted to speak to her as well. "I don't mind," he said.

They went down after Erik had locked up his office as well. Raven really was still in her office when Erik knocked at her door frame,busy reading some documents. She looked up and smiled at the two of them. "Heading home?" she asked.

Erik nodded. "And you should do so soon, too. But before, please take a look at what I just sent you," he told her.

"Understood, boss," she grinned. "Don't work too hard tonight, understood? The night's there for sleep." She winked at Charles who was standing behind Erik.

"Raven!" Charles gasped.

"Don't mind her, Charles, she's just teasing." Erik rolled his eyes and put an arm around Charles' waist to steer him out the door again. "Don't sleep in the office again, Raven, or I might want to start collecting rent!"

She waved after them, grinning and projecting some of her dirtier thoughts at Charles, leaving him flustered. "Do I even want to know?" Erik asked in the relative privacy of the elevator.

Charles shook his head. "She has some, ah, interesting ideas how far we went as teens," he said with a hesitant smile. "And even worse ideas on how close we are now." He buried his head against Erik's arm, just because it felt like the right thing to do. A huge part of him was mortified by what Raven had been thinking, even though the rest thought it would be a good idea to file the thoughts away as inspiration or at least to be inspected later when he was alone.

The drive home was too long for Charles to stay awake. He dozed off at some point and had to be shaken awake by Erik after they'd arrived. He was still not entirely awake when they stepped out of the elevator. He let Erik steer him into his flat and there into the kitchen, where Charles sat down at the table.

"Do you want to eat?" Erik asked. He was already putting together some light dinner. When Charles nodded, he merely adjusted the amount of food without a word.

As tired as Charles was, dinner was not quiet this time. Charles, unmotivated to talk much, asked strategic questions about Erik's plans and his work and let him do the talking. Erik didn't seem to mind, telling Charles in detail about a project he hoped would help with the air pollution. Charles nodded at the right places, wondering where Erik had even gotten or found the idea turn house walls into flowerbeds.

"Ready for bed?" Erik chuckled eventually.

Charles blinked at him. He felt like he had just dozed off for a moment.

"Should I walk you over again?" Erik asked, still smiling.

Charles shook his head. "Can I... Would you mind if I stayed over?"

His smile much softer, Erik took Charles' hand. "I'd like that."

Charles wasn't sure how he'd found his way into Erik's bedroom. Once there, however, he hesitated a moment, wondering if it was really wise to sleep in Erik's bed. Especially since he had no pyjamas. It was just as slim as Erik had described it. Not that it mattered all that much, but he now realized how his request had to look like.

"What's wrong?" Erik asked. He was already halfway undressed, standing there in nothing but his slacks. For a moment, Charles couldn't help but stare. He couldn't remember if Erik had always looked this good. The Erik in his memories had been so incredibly thin despite his muscles, not well toned and healthy.

"I..." Charles' shook his head. "I just want to sleep."

Erik nodded. "I do realize that," he smiled. "If you changed your mind about sleeping here..."

Quickly, Charles shook his head. "No, I do want to." He had missed out on opportunities like this before, he wouldn't let it happen again. Not without a good reason.

With a nod, Erik stepped past Charles to his closet. He took out a shirt which he handed to Charles. "I don't imagine you'd want to sleep in the nude," he said by means of explanation.

With a thankful smile, Charles took the shirt and he turned his back to Erik while he changed. When he turned back, Erik was wearing a ratty old t-shirt and shorts himself. Feeling incredibly domestic and young all of a sudden, Charles couldn't help but smile.

"Now come on, time for bed," Erik said. He slipped under the blanket, holding it up for Charles to follow. "Do you mind cuddling?" he asked.

Charles shook his head. He shifted until he was lying close to Erik, his head resting on his shoulder and an arm loosely over his stomach. Erik put his arm around him. "Always wondered what this'd be like," Charles murmured sleepily. "To fall asleep on your arms."

Erik's laugh in his ears, he drifted off to sleep.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Charles woke with Erik's arm heavy across his stomach. Over the night, they had shifted position so now Erik was spooning him, his even breath tickling the back of Charles' neck. He didn't open his eyes for a bit, simply enjoying the warmth of Erik's broad chest against his back and the steady drum of Erik's sleeping mind. It took a while before Erik slowly started to wake up, clearly much too content to wake up all at once. Charles wondered if this was all him, or if Erik had finally, thankfully, found the peace of mind to sleep throughout the night.

"Good morning," Charles hummed, when Erik's mind felt like he was at least somewhat coherent.

"M'ning," Erik mumbled back, before he buried his nose in Charles' hair and did his best to go back to sleep.

Charles shook his head with a smile. "Shouldn't we get up and go to work?"

"I'm the boss, nobody will say anything if I skip work for a day," Erik mumbled. "And I like it here so much better than out in the harsh, cold world."

Charles pressed his body back, a little closer against Erik's. "I can feel that, Erik," Charles said. He wasn't only feeling Erik's legs against the back of his own, but something similarly hard. "Morning wood, really?"

Erik tightened his grip around Charles' waist. "So what? It's only natural."

"Erik, if you now expect me to offer  _help_  with that, you're sorely mistaken," Charles sighed. "Just roll on your back and wait until it's over."

"So cold," Erik chuckled. "Does this answer still stand if I'd offered you to return the favor?" His hand on Charles' stomach started to rub him in small circles.

"If you touch me without explicit consent, I will wipe your mind, or let you sleep through the next few hundred years and then immediately inform Raven on the why, understood?" Charles threatened but there wasn't much ire in his words.

"You're no fun," Erik huffed. But since Charles made no move to extract himself from his arms, he didn't pull back.

For a little while longer, Charles simply enjoyed the situation he'd found himself in. Erik was holding still again now, with Charles' own hand placed over his.

"Would you mind staying home today?" Erik asked after a long while. "There are a couple of questions I want to ask you about the info you gave me and there's really no reason for us to go to my office just for that."

"So you want to spend a lazy work day at home? Do you even plan on leaving the bed?" Charles chuckled. Erik's mind felt so pleasantly lazy he was very tempted to give in. He was almost ready to close his eyes and spend the rest of the morning cuddling. Nothing about Erik indicated that he actually meant to be wading through data for hours at any point in the near future.

"We only have to leave if you want to," Erik murmured. It was practically a confirmation to Charles' suspicions.

Charles turned in Erik's arms to be able to look at him, before he answered. "I don't mind staying here," he said, very quietly. It could only help him with getting to know Erik better again. Cuddling with him like this, he had to remind himself that they had been apart for years, not just days. It helped to see Erik, see his older face and the lack of burning rage in his eyes. "But I don't want to stay in bed all day," he added.

"But we could do all the work in bed," Erik complained. "It's all on holopad anyway. Why leave a warm, comfortable bed just to do something we could be doing here as well."

"What about breakfast?" Charles reached up to stroke some hair from Erik's forehead. "Or..." For a second, he had to get over his hesitation again, before he went on, "How about you promise me not to do anything I don't want and then we'll head to the shower? Together?" It was a stupid offer, one he only considered for old time's sake. With anyone else, really, it would have been beyond off limits.

He could feel Erik wanting to say yes. He even got as far as opening his mouth, before his common sense kicked back in and he shook his head. "Why, Charles, can't you wash yourself on your own?" Erik teased. Behind his eyes, a small glint of panic flickered.

Charles bit his lips. Of course, it had been dumb to say anything in the first place. They weren't lovers, even though it felt like it most of the time. But the brief moments when he remembered, or was reminded, that they weren't, were worse than just being aware of it all the time. They couldn't just pick up where they had left off fifteen years ago. Intellectually, Charles knew that much. Just why was it all that difficult to put that knowledge into action. Without all his stupid hesitations, he knew Erik wouldn't mind them picking up right where they had left off. In fact, Erik already had made the next step, that should have followed when Charles had been seventeen, two days ago.

He hadn't even noticed Erik's arms sneaking back around his shoulders until he was pulled close and tugged under Erik's chin and held there. "Stop worrying so much," Erik sighed. "I don't mind that you're not ready. I wouldn't even mind all that much if you flat out rejected me. You came looking for a friend, not a lover, and I get that. Don't work yourself up. It's just feelings. And we'll both get over them eventually shouldn't it work out."

"But I want it to work out," Charles groaned. "It's ridiculous, isn't it? Shouldn't these things get easier when you're grown up?"  _Would you believe me if I told you that I love you and I'm just not sure about all the silly little details?_

Erik just hugged him closer for a moment. He was confused, Charles could tell, entangled with his mind as he was, but he did his best to keep it together and radiate calm and love for Charles.  _I always knew you loved me,_

Erik thought back at him.  _I trust you on this._

Out loud, Erik said, "Take your time, I'll wait. I waited for you to somehow come back into my life and you did, so I can wait some more for you to reach a decision you can live with on what you want us to be." With aching tenderness, he pressed a kiss to the side of Charles' head. "I promise I'll wait for you. Just like you promised me you'd come look for me if I get lost."

"But why?" The question was out before Charles had even thought about it. After that, there was no holding back. "I'm broken, Erik. I know what I feel but what I feel feels wrong or at least I'm just not sure what I feel anymore and I always thought this was supposed to get easier with time. I'm not a teen anymore."

"Shhht." Erik tilted his head back enough to look Charles' in the eye. "Nobody said you'd have to decide right now. Nothing is tied to you reciprocating my feelings for you. Calm down." With this, he pressed his lips on Charles' in a chaste kiss. He pulled away again quickly, however, a faint flush appearing on his cheeks. "How about you go have that shower now? The bathroom is right there. And, I'll, I'll go make breakfast, alright?"

The way he untangled himself from Charles was only not a flight because he was so careful about it. But within moments, Charles was alone under the blanket and in the bed. Erik's retreat let him only pause when he was already by the door to confirm, "You still like omelet for breakfast, right?" and he was gone as soon as Charles nodded.

Charles rolled onto his back and groaned, hiding his face with his arms. If only he had returned the kiss, would that have made Erik stay?

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


The shower did Charles a whole world of good. Stepping out of the big cubicle, he felt a lot calmer and his head was clearer as well. At some point while he was under the shower, Erik had mentally signalled that he'd brought some comfortable clothes over so Charles wouldn't have to wear the ones from yesterday again. He found them on the bed when he returned to the bedroom in nothing but a towel. Erik was nowhere to be seen, but he could hear cooking noises and his voice from the kitchen.

Once he was dressed, Charles padded over to the kitchen. Halfway through the living room, however, he realized that Erik was talking to somebody, possibly over voice chat. He hadn't meant to listen, but hearing Erik say "I don't know how long I can go on like this" had him stop dead in his tracks.

For a while, all Charles could hear was the noise of what must be frying omelet and the occasional confirming grunt from Erik. "Listen, Raven," Erik growled after a while. He sounded like he was just about to lose his nerve to listen to her. "I know all that. I am aware. Keenly aware even. But I actually don't care about your lectures on my personal decisions. I don't care if this is about what was rather than what is. I got more than I hoped for and really, I'm willing to bargain for scraps on that matter."

Charles got moving again when Erik was silent for another minute. "Well, fuck you too," Erik grumbled and threw an earpiece on the kitchen table, just as Charles entered the room. "Thought I needed this," Erik went on grumbling. He had his back turned to the door while he was jabbing at the omelet like he wanted to stab it. "No idea why. Damn her and everything about her."

Unsure whether he was welcome or not right now, Charles decided to make his presence known with a gentle brush at Erik's mind and a knock at the door frame. Let Erik decide whether he should stay or leave him alone for a while. It was abundantly clear to Charles that nothing of what he had said to Raven had been meant for his ears. Obviously, Erik had been talking about him. It left him with a sour taste.

He could see a visible change in Erik's entire stance, even before he turned around. When he looked at Charles, he was smiling. "Breakfast is almost ready," he told him, before he turned back to the omelet. "There's juice in the freezer and you know how to make yourself a cup of tea of coffee, so help yourself to something to drink." Next to the stove, Charles could see a big mug, so he figured Erik had made himself either coffee or tea already. He opted for juice this morning, feeling like he would need the vitamins more than caffeine.

"Is anything the matter?" Charles asked as he nipped at the glass of sour juice he'd poured himself. "You were muttering under your breath when I came in."

Without turning around, Erik shook his head. "It's nothing. Just Raven poking her nose into things that are none of her business."

Breakfast was rather quiet. Erik was still too unsettled to talk much, now looking so much more like the boy Charles had known than he had over the past two days. Charles didn't try to spark a conversation. He'd seen that kind of mood on Erik often enough to know he would snap out of it either on his own pace or never. The omelet was delicious, though, so Charles made a point to let Erik know about that, at least.

For some reason, that only kindled Erik's grumpy mood, instead of bettering it.

After breakfast they settled down around the coffee table. Erik left the couch to Charles, while he himself occupied an armchair. Erik set up a small holo projector in the middle of the table so he could show Charles whatever he needed. For a long while, he set it on the moon most of Charles' information was about, including the estimated figures on how much of which elements and resources the buyer of mining rights would be expected to find there.

For a long while, Erik was merely reading something on his personal holo pad, slightly frowning all the entire time. Charles waited for him to ask questions or show any indication that he wanted Charles' input. While he waited, Charles looked over the simulations again. It sounded all very good. He knew the two most common minerals on the moon were the ones Markorp needed the most and was always on the lookout for, but beyond that, he mostly didn't even have an idea what they could be used for, even though he knew the usual price they fetched at the commodity exchange in most cases.

Eventually, Erik looked up from the data he had been reading with a groan. "It's no use," he sighed. "I can't justify entering the biding. I thought, there would be something there that would make it worth it for me, but there just isn't. I don't need any more metals, most of the metals that can be found there I can get cheaper by buying scraps and recycling them. The quartz is something I can use, but the rest..." He threw his holo pad down. "I would need to sell those and I don't think I could find enough buyers to even make up for my investment."

Charles bit his lower lip. "Is that so?" he sighed. How fast his only hope could be destroyed by reality. "There's nothing you can do? What about the rest of the data?" If only he had had a plan B.

"This is the best bet to hurt Markorp, you know that just as well as I do. But I don't want to ruin both out companies." Gloomily, Erik stared at the holographic projection of the moon. He nodded, his eyes fixed on the ever changing numbers displayed next to the meteor scarred rock. "I really want to help you, Charles," he said in a flat voice. "I just... Can't. I would in a minute if it was only about me, but I have responsibilities now. ...are you going to leave now that I can't fulfill my part of the agreement? I wouldn't blame you. I'd even pay you some recompense for letting me go through your data."

Charles' first reflex was to deny that he would leave now, but he did consider the option for a moment. If Erik couldn't help him, he didn't have a real reason to stay. Well, aside from the fact that he'd rather stay by Erik's side than being apart again, this time maybe for good. He could only imagine how Erik would react to be the one left for once. "Can't I just stay here until you can fulfill your part of our agreement?" he said, very quietly.

Erik's eyes flickered over to him for a second, a painful mix of hope and panic visible all across his face. "That wouldn't be fair, Charles," he got out. He turned his attention back to the holographic moon.

"I wouldn't offer it if I didn't want to," Charles said. "I understand why you can't help me now, but the situation could change, couldn't it? Of course, then I wouldn't have anything to offer anymore. Well, maybe myself, but..."

Erik held up a hand all of a sudden. "Wait a second." He squinted at the data next to the moon, curse when it changed before he was done looking and scrambled to get to his holopad to switch the data back. "What, this is impossible, that shouldn't even be there," he murmured. "Charles, are you sure this data is correct?"

Charles nodded, confused as to what had caught Erik's eye. "It's all very careful guesses but the estimations of the company Markorp usually commissions is trustworthy. Why?"

"Because that's the biggest deposit of bhagavite I've ever seen," Erik murmured. He was already typing away on his pad.

"Does that change anything?" Charles, who had no idea what bhagavite even was, asked.

"Are you serious? That changes just about everything," Erik said. He looked up for a moment. "It's not only the perfect justification, I'm now genuinely interested in the mining rights without even having to have an ulterior motive."

The wave of excitement rolling off Erik was staggering for Charles. "So, you're saying you'll keep your side of the agreement after all?" he asked. It sounded like it, but he did need the confirmation.

"Are you mad? I couldn't pass up on this even if I had no further reason of buying into that moon. bhagavite is something I need," Erik said, firing off a mail. "The research and development department has been bugging me about probes of that stuff for months and it seemed to be perfect for what they're doing when they got it. We need more if we ever want to go serial with it. I could kiss you for that info."

"Then why don't you?" Charles asked out of reflex.

For a second, Erik blinked at him, before he reached over and did just that.


	4. Chapter 4

Erik would have pulled back quickly, if Charles hadn't returned the kiss almost as soon as their lips touched. Still, it was over sooner than Charles would have liked. He let out a low whimper when Erik inevitably pulled back and returned to his seat. His ears were burning and Charles could feel his heart hammering up to his throat. Erik didn't seem to be much better off, but he was already typing away on his pad again, utilizing his old strategy of dealing with troubles at hand rather than bother with emotional situations that could probably wait until later, or preferably never.

With nothing else to do for now, Charles watched him type animatedly. He couldn't remember ever seeing his old friend this excited. When it came to Erik, he knew angry, brooding, loving and even grimly determined that could pass off as excited if one disregarded the boiling rage at the bottom of it, but never hopefully excited. It looked good on him, Charles had to admit.

It almost made Charles want to kiss him again.

After a while, Erik looked up from the pad and pulled a face. "I'm afraid I'll have to go to the office after all," he announced. "I need to talk this over with a lot of people and see if anyone foresees any problems aside of course from having other bidders trying to outbid us. I'll also have to call up a couple of business contacts and..." He ran a hand through his hair. "Okay, I thought I had prepared for the case that you info was good but now that it's this good and perfect, we're incredibly unprepared and there's so much to do in little time. Bidding ends in three days, right?" Charles nodded. "Then we'll have to hurry to put together a sound proposal, even though it surely would be best to throw in the best offer possible at the last moment, I think. We wouldn't want anyone to know about our keen interest in the resources, or people might ask questions about it. There's dangerous stuff there, not just what I want. And once upon a time, this company was, among many other things, a weapons manufacturer. People might think I want to pick it up again--or never shut it down in the first place."

The part about the dangerous materials, Charles had already noted himself. There were energy sources, materials for weapons and bombs, even materials to build interstellar ships with. Everything valuable, everything with a hefty price for those who didn't have any of their own. He could also remember what Erik had told him about Phaver Etaireia back in their youth, about them being one of the most important arms dealers. And yet, Erik was focused on some second rate mineral nobody knew what to use for. But perhaps that was the difference here. A gamble, Erik had called it. However, it looked like the possible profits now outweighed the risks.

"Go, if you need to, I can wait for you here, or come with you," Charles offered. "That is, if you think you'll need me."

Erik thought about this for a moment. He had already packed up his holopad and now made a move for the bedroom to change. "I think it would be good if you could come with me," he said eventually. "I'm sure a couple of department heads will have questions for you about certain details."

"Then I'll go over and get dressed and meet you here or in the hallway in a couple of minutes?"

Erik nodded. "Hurry, I want to leave as soon as possible."

Five minutes later, Charles, fully dressed in a reasonable suit with a really favorable cut, met Erik in the hallway. Erik was talking to somebody over voice chat again and simply called for the elevator. The call continued for the most of the drive to the office. Charles did his best not to listen in too much. Apparently, it was about what they could do with the resources they wouldn't need themselves, and which they could use anyway. The question of transportation came up as well, with Erik pointing out that the moon was only a solar system over and therefore no big deal to get to.

At the office, Erik went straight to a conference room, leaving Charles to either follow or stay and wait for him, most likely on his own, because Raven was busy now. The whole building, come to think of it, was now busy all of a sudden. It was like Erik wasn't the only one excited about the prospect of acquiring new resources. Charles opted to follow Erik, if he was allowed to do so.

A couple of people were already waiting for Erik in the conference room, men and women of different shapes and in different clothes indicating different departments. Charles guessed the meticulously dressed male to be head of the sales department, the female next to him in the lab coat to be one of the researches and so on and so forth. One or two frowned at him, but nobody dared to say anything in front of Erik. Charles could still feel them wonder what Erik's little bit on the side was doing in a conference with them, but he decided to ignore it.

At first, the discussion was mostly about the risks and chances the deal would offer the company, but soon, as most of the people present agreed that trying to get the mining rights on that moon was only in their best interest, the topic shifted to possible ways of ensuring to win the bidding contest. At this point, Erik started to involve Charles in the discussion, asking him for his guesses on who might want to place a bid and how high they might be willing to go and their interests in the resources,

When the conference finally ended after hours, Charles was exhausted to the point at which his head was spinning. When he noticed, Erik told him to go find a place to sit down and wait until he was done with work, but when Charles left the room, unsure where to go, the woman in the lab coat came up to him.

"Hello, I believe we haven't been introduced properly," she held out her hand for Charles to shake. "My name is Moira and I'm head of the research department here."

"Charles," Charles said as he shook her hand. "Pleased to meet you. Uhm, is there anything else you need to know from me?"

Moira shook her head, but then winked. "Aside from finally getting to know you, no, I don't want anything _from_  you. I actually meant to show you something. Erik said you didn't know why we're all getting excited over a seemingly worthless rare mineral, so I thought I'd invite you down to the labs while we don't have much to do." She shrugged and added, with a not even slightly sheepish smile, "If that puts me ahead of office gossip because I got to know the fabled Charles Xavier, then so be it."

Charles raised an eyebrow at the  _fabled_  but didn't comment on it. It was most likely just the usual gossip of employees about their bosses and their love life. "I'd love to come down, but are you sure you want me down there?" he said.

Moira nodded "Of course. Erik said it's okay, so I don't see any reason not to. He'll call if he needs you." She studied his face for a moment. "Or would you rather go and lie down somewhere? You don't look all that good."

Charles shook his head and then, as an afterthought, tipped at the side of his head. "I'm okay," he assured her. "Just... with all this excitement and busy anticipation leaking through sub par inhibitors, it feels like I'm drunk. Possibly on everybody else's endorphin, but still. I just have to get used to it a little better, that's all."

"Well then." Moira clapped her hands together. "In that case, let me lead you down into our den." She looped her arm through Charles' and led him over to the elevator.

On their way down to the labs, Moira took the time to give Charles a brief outline of what she and her team were working on. When Erik had taken over almost ten years ago, there had been almost no civilian research and the bit that was done was only to improve existing technology and hoard patents. Erik had taken it upon himself to restructure the entire corporation, one of his first acts had been to build up a civilian research department and then buying up a couple of small companies specialized in fields he thought were interesting for the corporations new direction while getting rid of the weapons development department and anything that had to do with it. Charles remembered the ruckus Erik's decisions back then had caused in the industry. The company buying the weapons department had gone bankrupt eventually, but the new additions to Erik's corporation were now at the top of their fields, snatching commissions even on the Inner Planets.

Moira sounded incredibly proud while she told him all this. It was easy to see that she was a woman difficult to get excited over nothing, but also somebody that was inherently, deeply proud of anything good she did. She was full of praise for her team as well and, once in the lab she wanted to show Charles, didn't hesitate to praise everyone for his or her work while she introduced them. Charles suspected part of it was so he could tell Erik about their work, but that would only be necessary if he didn't care enough to keep an eye on their progress. He somehow doubted that was the case.

When he had been introduced to all researchers in the lab, Moira led him over to a table. On it, the parts of a machine were strewn about, amongst other things a couple of filter plates, frames and an uncountable number of small screws and scraps. Moira brought another machine over from a nearby workstation, after confirming with the man working there that it was a working one.

"So," she started. "This is what we're working on here. These are prototypes of air filters. We plan on sticking a couple of those, or bigger versions of it, on the roof of every building we own on this planet once we're able to go serial with them, to maybe, eventually, clean the air and make it breathable again."

She went on to explain the general workings of the filter to Charles, handing him each filter she was talking about. The last one, she said, was filled with mineral wool, made from the very bhagavite Erik had gotten so excited about. It was of a dark, greenish gray, nothing special in the way it looked.

"We tried a lot of things before we tested this," Moira said. "And it's the only one that's ever worked. We've been so glad we could get our hands on enough of it to build about five test filters. So far it worked out, but we can't go serial when we're lacking in one of our most important resources."

Charles nodded. He got now why she'd been so excited, why Erik was so excited. It could be a big step to his goal of making this planet inhabitable once more. "And what do you do with the filtrate?" he asked.

She smile at him. "Well, that's part of why bhagavite is so important," she said. "But come on, to show you we'll have to go down a level, where the bio labs are."

Charles followed her down, to a set of glass tanks filled with some dark dirt. "We're using microbes and worms we discovered a while ago to process the filtrate into fertile soil," she explained. "Before we started to used the bhagavite filters, however, some toxins remained and the plants we put into the soil died. But the problem seems to be solved now, thanks to the new filters."

Charles stayed with her for another couple of hours, listening to her explanations and watching her work. He genuinely liked her and being in her company. That her work was interesting to him as well only helped, too. So when she eventually declared that it was time for her to head home and that he should probably go up to Erik's office and tell the boss to get some sleep or at least not work himself ragged, he was almost sorry.

"You can come down anytime," Moira said when they were saying good-bye in front of the elevators. "It was a delight having you here. A fresh set of eyes is always appreciated."

"I'd love to." Charles shook Moira's offered hand. "See you tomorrow, then?"

"See you then," she replied. Her elevator arrived and she stepped inside. "And look after your man for us, okay?"

Charles was too dumbfounded to respond before the elevator doors closed.

He reached the top floor a couple of minutes later, slightly worried about Erik now that he'd time to think about what Moira had said about the way he worked. He remembered that side of Erik, too focused on the things he regarded as important to eat or sleep unless someone reminded him of it. Today, with a closing time window in less than three days, was just begging for Erik to overwork himself, Charles realized.

The top floor was almost deserted, only Erik's secretary was holding her position at the end of the hallway. Charles walked straight up to her, asking, "Is Erik busy or can I just go in?" He was already brushing up against Erik's mind to announce his presence while he talked. He got a response, albeit a distracted one. From what he could tell, Erik was reading.

The secretary looked him once up and down. "Go in, he said you're welcome whenever he isn't in a conference," she said, waving him through the doors.

Erik was sitting at his desk when Charles entered. His whole posture was stiff and he was staring at his holo pad, his eyes the only part of him moving. Nothing to made Charles worry any less.

"How's your bid coming along?" Charles asked softly after a while.

Erik looked up at him and smiled briefly, before he returned his attention to whatever it was he was reading on his holo pad. "We're still within schedule," he said.

"What do you need to do today that can't wait until tomorrow?" Charles asked as he walked up to Erik.

"I should finish reading this report and..." His glance strayed over to the clock at the bottom of his screen. He ran a hand through his hair. "It's too late to call business partners, so I think that's it." He sighed. "Where did all the time go."

Charles nodded. "Good, then I'll be waiting until you're finished reading," he said. "And then, we'll go home, understood? You can come here again first thing in the morning, but you need sleep, too. And your couch here is even further from big enough for two than your bed, don't you think?"

"Give me ten more minutes," Erik said with a wry smile.

In the end, Charles waited more like twenty minutes, but he was willing to overlook it since Erik hadn't protested at all against leaving. He could feel that Erik's mind was tired and getting sluggish just like his own, so Charles made a point to watch out for Erik for the entire ride home, keeping him occupied by telling him about what Moira had shown him and prompting Erik to talk about his own afternoon.

Back at home neither was up to much of a dinner, so they settled for cold leftovers and bread, before they got ready for the night.

"You didn't have to drag me home for the night," Erik commented as he was slipping into bed. "Raven already did tell me to, and I quote, get the fuck home and into bed."

"But I know you," Charles sighed. "Letting you decide on your own when you've worked enough is the same as saying I want to hurt you." He lay down in Erik's waiting arms, ready to sleep.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Charles woke in Erik's arms again, just with the same sense of sluggishness as the day before. Erik, however, wasn't lacking hurry or enthusiasm to get out of bed. And no amount of drowsy, murmured complaints from Charles could change that. So Charles had to resign himself to leaving the bed as well, padding after Erik into the bathroom.

"Do you want to shower together?" Erik asked, looking Charles up and down. "I'd offer you to shower first but I'm convinced you'll fall asleep again as soon as I let you out of sigh."

Instead of an answer, Charles simply wrapped his arms around Erik's waist and murmured against his chest, "Shower sounds good."

With a, perhaps a little more theatrical than strictly necessary, sigh, Erik did his best to gently free himself again. "Okay, fine, but no touching, alright?"

Charles nodded. He took a step back and began to strip. "Maybe I should bring some clothes over," he mused. "It's not practical when I'm here all the time anyway."

Erik paused in his undressing to stare at Charles. "Not practical, huh? It's only the third day," he reminded Charles.

"And I slept over in 'my' bed once," Charles countered. He was slowly getting there to be fully awake. "Or don't you want me here?"

Erik swallowed visibly. "Are you really sure about this? It's been five days, after fifteen years of no contact." His voice was hoarse and behind the walls he'd closed around his mind, Charles could feel conflicted feelings.

"I'm sure," Charles replied, putting as much conviction into his voice as he could. Only in his underwear as he was, he stepped up to Erik and hugged him again. "I'm sure Erik. It's been fifteen years, but you're still the same, never mind how much you've changed." He bit his lip, unsure if the words he was about to say were the right ones at this time and place.  _I love you, Erik,_ he whispered into Erik's mind, unable to bring himself to say the words out loud.

Erik pulled him closer, leaning in close so he could whisper in his ear, "I love you, too." After a long moment, however, he pushed Charles' back by his shoulders. "But if you can't even bring yourself to say it out loud..." He shook his head. "Maybe you should wait a little longer."

Charles pressed his lips together. "Stop being so condescending, Erik. I always knew, once I'd have you back, I wouldn't be able to let you go again," he sighed. "I only had to come to terms with it. And I have, now. Can't you believe me?"

Erik shook his head. "Later," he said. "We'll talk about this tonight, alright?" He ran a hand through his hair. "Go shower. We'll leave soon."

With this, Erik left the bathroom as he was, leaving Charles behind, who was shaking with confusion and an undercurrent of anger.

 

~*~

 

Hurt and confused, Charles spend the day down in the labs with Moira as long as she would have him. It did him well to be able to take his thoughts off Erik for a bit. If only Erik could decide for himself what he wanted, instead of sending all these mixed, or even contradicting, signals. The nerve of telling him he loved him just to push him back at arms length a moment later.

Erik holed himself up in his office all day, apparently, from what Moira told Charles, only talking to Raven and otherwise calling up friends and trusted business partners for heaven's knew what reasons. Probably to get them to back the project and find out whether or not there was a demand for the resources they would be able to mine on the side. Charles could have checked, if he'd bothered to keep tabs on Erik's mind which he pointedly did not.

Eventually, just before she was about to call it a day, Moira took Charles outside and into a lonely corner for a quick talk. "Are you okay?" she asked. "Did you two have a fight?"

"No, of course not!" Charles protested. "Everything is fine, really. Just stressful."

Moira seemed unconvinced. "Listen, whatever it is, I hope it'll work out for you," she sighed. "Despite what Erik might think, other people are not blind and we all know you're important to him, you always were. So... just don't doubt him because he's being an idiot, alright?"

"Even when he's a big, self-contradicting idiot?" Charles huffed. The thought that Erik's reasons for telling him to wait a little longer before making important decisions that could only be undone with a great deal of pain and tears weren't all that stupid had crossed his mind during the day more than once, but he wasn't exactly ready to acknowledge it yet.

Moira raised an eyebrow. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Charles shook his head. "No, but thank you anyway. I'll just talk to him tonight."

Moira nodded. "You do that." She pulled Charles in a quick hug. "I'm sure you'll work it out."

Charles awkwardly returned the hug. They returned to the lab for another couple of minutes, before Moira packed everything up for the day. Charles took this as his cue to finally man up and go see what Erik was doing and, if possible, get him to sleep in his bed or at least not at his desk from exhaustion.

When he reached the top floor, the door to Erik's office was open a crack. The secretary had already gone home and Charles could hear voices from the office, He soon identified Raven as the one Erik was talking to. For a moment, he paused in the hallway, telepathically asking Erik if it was okay to come in.

 _Just one more moment,_  Erik replied.  _We can leave as soon as I'm done talking to Raven. Just wait by the elevator._

Begrudgingly, Charles did as he was told. He didn't even eavesdrop, mainly because Erik had sounded like it was serious and he'd rather have Erik tell him himself. In the end, he only waited a few minutes, before Raven and Erik emerged from the office.

"...hope you're wrong," Raven said, continuing the conversation they'd had in Erik's office.

"I hope so, too," Erik sighed. He looked tired. "But I'd rather be safe than sorry."

"I'll take care of it," Raven reassured him. They stopped in front of Charles. Raven clasped Erik's shoulder. "And now go home and try to get some sleep. You should be well rested tomorrow to take care of the last details." She smiled at Charles for a second, before it turned slightly lewd. "Don't keep him up all night."

"I don't plan to," Charles replied, returning her smile.

 

~*~

 

Charles did his best to pretend their little talk in the bathroom that morning hadn't happened until they had settled down in bed. "Erik?" he asked, feeling slightly silly for his insecurity. "Is it later now?"

He could feel Erik's sigh mentally just as well as he could hear it. "I guess so," Erik still answered.

"So?" was what Charles wanted to ask. But instead, he asked what he'd glimpsed in Erik's mind when he'd been done being angry with him. "Are you that afraid we could part again?"

Erik sighed, tightening his grip around Charles' shoulder. "I'm sorry." The words were as good as any confirmation. "I'm awake and you're right next to me, breathing, alive and  _here_. That's all I should care about and yet..." He shrugged.

"Oh Erik." Charles smiled. "If I'd promise you to never leave you again, would you take the risk?"

That, at least, made Erik laugh. "You ask me to take an awful lot of risks. I'm not quite sure if I'm not too old for that by now."  _But I would take the risk, for you,_  was the bright thought at the forefront of his mind.

As Erik leaned in for a kiss, Charles didn't even think twice before he responded in turn.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Early the next morning, Erik called in a meeting with his management, the same people he had initially informed about his plans. He had insisted on Charles being present but with everyone but Erik wearing inhibitors and without any order from Erik to watch out for something, he resigned to listen passively with his ears alone.

First, Erik just asked if there were still concerns or reservations against them bidding a large sum for the mining rights on a moon not too close. When nobody voiced anything, he went on to discuss some issues they'd apparently only worked out last minute, making sure everything that needed settling was dealt with.

Everything seemed to have gone according to plan, so when Erik was satisfied, he let Raven circulate the draft of their proposal, so everyone could read over it and have a final discussion. "Remember, I ask you all for the utmost secrecy on this," Erik reminded them. "I don't want any copies of this to leave the room. We've temporarily disabled any transmissions from this room and the files you've got will delete themselves in about twenty minutes."

The general confusion and concern about this statement was obvious even without telepathy, but for a short moment, Charles had the feeling that at least one of them wasn't worried in the same way as the others, but it vanished before he could find out who it was. He informed Erik, though all he got in reply was a mental shrug and the wordless equivalent of "it can't be helped". Charles frowned but let it go for now, expecting Erik to explain it later. He did, however, now keep closer tabs on the minds of the people present.

The discussion of the proposal itself was swiftly dealt with. There were a few complaints about wording choices, and finances asked if it was really necessary to possibly spent so much money which Erik cut off with the assurance that, yes, indeed, they needed for their bid to be this high.

Soon enough, the meeting ended, with Erik signing the bid and sending everyone back to their work. He'd inform them about the outcome as soon as he knew.

"Raven, another word," Erik said, as everyone else was filing out the conference room. Charles searched the eyes of his friend, giving him a mental nudge to find out if he was supposed to stay or wait outside.  _Stay. Please,_  Erik replied.

"What is it?" Raven asked. She was leaning her hip against the table where Erik was still seated.

"I just got another mail," Erik said, very quietly, his mouth a thin line. It was obvious that he didn't like what he felt like he had to do. "I want to make a last change to our bid."

Raven frowned. "We've put together the best bid we can safely offer." She shook her head. "Erik, we can't change anything about it now. We're at our limit!"

Erik pulled a face and held out his head. "Still," he said, waiting for her to hand him what would have been the final draft of their bid. In silence, he typed, signed it again, before he handed the pad back. "That should do it," he sighed.

Raven skimmed the bid for changes before she looked back at Erik. "I really hope you do what you're doing here."

With a hard smile on his face, Erik looked back at her. "So do I," he said. "But sometimes, you have to trust others, right?"

"I hope you picked the right ones to trust then." She shrugged. "Well, it's your responsibility."

"I know," Erik growled. "And now go get that thing send away before I change my mind!"

Raven smirked. She reached down to pat Erik on his back, before she took her pad and left, not without saying, "I don't want to see you here anymore until we have a reply. After all, what if you'd have to go on a longer business trip and haven't spent enough time with Charles before?"

Even after Raven had left, Erik made no move to get up as well. Charles sat down on the empty chair next to him, worried enough to reach out for Erik in a genuine, comforting gesture, much more than what he'd otherwise dare at a semi-public place like this. "What's wrong?" he asked.

However, Erik merely shook his head. "It's nothing, just a few rough days," he sighed. "Let's go home, shall we?" Mentally, however, he added,  _I was_ informed _that somebody had alerted competitors about our aspirations. Maybe even with exact numbers._  It was obvious how much it unsettled Erik to think there was a mole, or at least somebody working against him from within or close to his own inner circle of managers.

As soon as Erik was standing, Charles therefore wrapped his arms around him and pressed a quick kiss against his lips. "Let's just go home for now. You can deal with it when you get there," he suggested. "What was it that Raven said about a business trip without me?"

"What she meant," Erik frowned, but his features were overall softer now that he was looking at Charles. "Was that I'd rather not take you anywhere close to your step family if at all possible. You stay here and keep Moira from her work. You seem very good at that."

Charles swatted his chest for that, only mock pouting at the remark. "Dr McTaggart said my fresh set of eyes is very helpful."

"Oh sure she does," Erik now grinned. "Did she tell you yet what kind of experiment she'll need them for?"

They kept up the pleasant banter until well after they'd arrived at home. It felt only natural like this, as something they had done before so many times. Again, the years apart were forgotten so much easier than they had been lived.

"So, what was this about?" Charles asked eventually, when they were curled up on Erik's couch, comfortable and happy enough to honestly talk about the hard topics.

"This was my desperation in action," Erik replied. He ruffled his hair. "I can't prove it, but... I'm afraid there's somebody working against me in my own management." He pulled a face. "The worst is even people from other companies knew before me, apparently." He groaned. "It's bad timing, that's all."

"That means what I felt in the conference room..." Charles mused.

"Was probably whoever is working against me, yes," Erik sighed. "At least that limits the number of suspects. Possibly." He pressed a kiss against the side of Charles' head. "Enough of this for now. That's just something else I'll deal with when I get there."

Charles nodded. "Let's use the time we have until you'll leave me, again." His tone was soft and obviously mocking, but Erik nevertheless went still for a moment, before he relaxed again when Charles slipped onto his lap.

"I'm sorry about leaving you back then, you know," Erik said, between kisses.

"I know," Charles hummed back. "It's part of why I stayed."


	5. Chapter 5

A couple of days later, Charles was woken by Erik talking animatedly to a caller. The ringing was what had woken him initially, but Erik's voice was what brought him the last bit of the way back to the world of the fully awake. He sounded so happy and excited, Charles wanted nothing more than to wrap his telepathy as tightly around Erik's mind as possible to lavish in the feeling forever.

Absentmindedly, Erik petted his hair while he was talking to Raven about the upcoming business trip Erik would have to make. Charles blinked up at him, trying to put what he heard of the conversation together with what he knew.

_You really won the bidding competition?_  Charles murmured into Erik's mind.

Erik nodded to Charles, before he turned his attention back to his conversation. "Raven, we talk when I get to the office okay?" he said, making a few non-committal sounds when she said something to him until he cut off the connection with a long sigh.

"Morning," he smiled at Charles, running his hand through Charles' already ruffled hair. "We did win, I'm to travel to Luxechiam to sign the contract as soon as possible. Which would be tonight as that's the soonest we can organize everything." He sighed. "You'll forgive me if I don't take you with me?"

Charles leaned up to kiss Erik good morning. "Of course," he smiled. "At least I know you're coming back this time."

"I will," Erik said, with a little more determination than strictly necessary. He hugged Charles close. "I promise you this time i will."

"Then that's good enough for me," Charles sighed. "Now up we get. You have a long day ahead and I want to keep you as much from it as I can."

In the end, Charles didn't have much opportunity to interfere but plenty to distract Erik. The suitcase was packed with a well-practiced swiftness. At the office, Raven was the one in charge of handling the preparations, calling up their pilot and figuring out who should accompany Erik on the trip. All she needed Erik for was to nod at her decisions and make some minor changes to her plans.

Erik would take Hank from Moira's team, as well as Janos from the legal department with him. They'd leave right after dinner and reach the Inner Planets and therefore Luxechiam in about a standard day. If everything went according to plan, they'd spent two days at the base the signing should take place on, before heading home. Four days from now, they'd be back, save, sound, and with the signed contract in their baggage.

Besides Charles and Raven, Moira and Emma Frost, the head of the legal department,had come to see them off.

The shuttle that would take Erik and his two companions into orbit was one of the company's own, with their logo on the side. It looked a little older than what Charles was used to from the Inner Planets but sturdy and well kept enough so nobody should have to worry about them reaching space. There, at a geostationary station, Erik had explained to Charles over dinner, they would change vehicles, taking the company yacht, the Caspertina. It was a state of the art ship, quick, luxurious and with an amazing amount of hidden storage. Had been Shaw's pride and he had maintained it well, Erik had added. It was handy to have a ship like the Caspertina, so he had kept her.

On the landing platform, all Charles got in regards of a goodbye was a quick hug and a  _I love you_  whispered into his mind. They had had their real goodbye earlier, in the privacy of Erik's office where nobody had been able to disturb or watch them.

"Look after Charles for me while I'm gone," Erik told Raven instead of a goodbye.

"Of course I will, but you should be more worried about yourself," she replied. "And now get going, you're set to leave in an hour."

Erik rolled his eyes, kissed her cheek and murmured a compliment at her, before climbing into the shuttle. Charles wondered how far he could stretch his telepathy if he really tried it. But the risk of tracking a mind that was physically moving at high speeds was always dangerous, so Charles bid Erik goodbye one last time and then shutting down their connection. The empty space it left in his mind, especially when Erik then turned his inhibitors back on, made him wish they were back already.

The four of them watched the shuttle take off and vanish above the smog and clouds. Emma was the first to head back in, claiming to have still work to do. Raven, Charles and Moira soon followed, glad to get out of the smog again. Since Moira was heading home, Charles followed Raven to her office. She had offered him a ride home, to Erik's place that was, but would need to finish her work for the day before she could leave.

The minute they were alone in her office with the door closed, however, Raven turned to Charles with a serious expression. "I didn't want to say anything in front of Erik," she said, taking her holo pad from her desk. "But earlier, I received a concerning message, addressed at you. I went ahead and read it, since it came through the official company mail account. I would have deleted it, too, but then I thought, what if there's something to it? Uhm..." She fumbled with the pad. "Do you really want to read it? It's quite concerning. If you weren't under security detail already, I'd have you watched after reading it."

Charles frowned. "What mail?" He held out his hand. "Whatever it is, I want to know. Maybe it's totally pointless and you worry over nothing."

Raven's mouth became a thin line, but she handed the pad over. "I doubt it's nothing."

As Charles read the message, his face paled. " _Charles,_ " it read. " _If I'd know you were still friends with space pirate scum like Lehnsherr, I'd have locked you up long ago. But turning against your own family like this, that should have even been below you. You crossed the Rubicon there. I want to break you. I will break you. You will learn your place, once and for all. And I'll start by taking away what means the most to you._ " It was signed with " _Your loving father_ " and had some coordinates and the word "Airlock" in the P.S.

"Raven, what's at these coordinates?" Charles asked, his voice shaking. He knew before she told him. It was a spot close to the sun of the NangLa system. Erik had told him two nights before, when he had told him how and where Shaw died. The method and the coordinates written out in the message.

"We have to warn Erik," Charles said. He couldn't keep the panic out of his voice any longer. Kurt knew, Kurt wanted to take Erik down for murder, just to hurt him. And Charles couldn't allow that. Anything but that.

Raven frowned. "Is it that serious?" she asked, glancing at her watch. When Charles nodded, she took up her headset and made a quick call. Charles watched her for the brief time it took. But very quickly, it became obvious that whatever she'd tried hadn't worked.

"They've already left the station," she said, adding a harsh curse as she puts the headset down again. She took a few steps, sighed, cursed some more before she turned back to Charles. "Okay, tell me, what exactly is that supposed to mean? We can't contact Erik while he's on his way, so let's gather the information we have so we can give him all he needs to know as soon as he arrives. Start with whoever send the message and why."

Charles took a deep breath. "It's my stepfather," he said. "And I think this might just because I don't let him use me like he wants to use me, at minimal cost for himself, but he might also be angry that I just took off and handed all the information I had over to Erik to use against him." He shrugged. "That's all I know."

"So, this is a personal attack against you?" She narrowed her eyes, looking far more dangerous than ever now. "Erik's just, what, collateral damage because you chose him instead of anyone else to share company secrets with?"

Involuntarily, Charles' clenched his hands to fists. "I'd rather say Erik was a target the moment I contacted him. Kurt remembers Erik, I'm sure of that." He swallowed. "The last time they met, Erik almost hit Kurt. With a fleet of speeders. And Kurt was a second away from calling the cops. One of the wealthiest men on the Inner Planets against an orphan refugee from a failed world, you can figure that Kurt wouldn't have needed any proof for his claims, whatever he'd claimed."

Raven nodded, looking very serious. "So, that threat is not empty. This Kurt hates you both and you think it's reasonable to believe he'd do anything he could to crush you," she summarized. "Okay, what do you think he has on Erik?"

Charles picked up the holopad again and tipped the P.S. "I can trust you with Erik, can I?" he asked. Raven nodded. "It's where and how Shaw died." Charles pulled a face. "Erik..."

But Raven held up her hand to hush him before he could go any further. She tipped her inhibitors, turning them off so Charles could hear her mind.  _Tell me like this,_  she projected. It was obvious that she wasn't too well used to it but it worked surprisingly well. She must have been trained by another telepath.

_Erik said there wasn't any proof to tie to him, he was only on board the Caspertina when it happened because he was the mechanic and according to his worker's chip he never left the engine room. I'm sure you know the official version,_  Charles said.  _I'd only tell you the details Erik told me if you wanted me to. Unlike me, you're not a telepath and could be a witness at court, after all._

Raven shook her head. "I think this is enough," she said out loud, turning her inhibitors back on, but not before she'd signaled Charles she would so he could pull back. "I told that idiot it would come back to bite him in the ass eventually," she groaned."And now he's on his way to the Inner Planets, right where he could be arrested for allegedly killing a 'good man'. Fuck!"

"And we can't do anything until he gets there," Charles sighed. "It's all my fault." He shuffled over to one of the armchairs and slumped down into it.

"Stop wallowing in self-pity," Raven huffed. "You know, this might be the right time to live up to the image everyone here has of you thanks to Erik's drunken stories and do something. Go write him a mail, I'm sure he'd check it first thing upon arrival if it's from you and then we'll need to make plans."

Charles looked up. "What plans?" he asked, a frown creeping onto his face. "Does Erik trust his legal department?"

For some reason, that made Raven laugh. "No," she said. "But it's worth a shot, if you met with her and decided you did."

Charles nodded. "Emma, was it? Is she still here?"

Raven raised an eyebrow. "How come you think I'd know about this?" she grinned, before she typed something into her pad and then shook her head. "Sorry, she's already signed out of the system half an hour ago. So she's gone home already. Well, tomorrow is not too late yet. We have until tomorrow evening, after all."

Charles nodded. "But I'd rather write the mail to Erik tonight, if you don't mind."

Raven shrugged. "Suit yourself, I've still some work to do anyway, so it'll be a while before I can drive you home."

"Thank you," Charles said, earnestly, as he took out his pad and started to type a private mail to Erik. Raven smiled back at him, but didn't say anything back.

*** * ***

Later that night, when he was lying alone in Erik's now cold and much too empty bed, Charles thought about what he'd written, trying to pass off information and concern as a love letter.

He wondered, if back in the old times, when space travel had been an adventure still and no spaceman knew if he'd come back, the ones staying behind had written messages like this too, praying for their beloved to read the mail as soon as they reached a base.

_I wish I didn't love you, because then it wouldn't hurt as much now,_  he'd written.  _I miss you, promise me to take care and come back home to me in one piece._  And,  _My father knows and is opposed to our affair, be wary of him._  in the hope Erik would understand.

He hadn't dared to include more outright warnings, no details. In the dark, Charles had wished he could just have forwarded Kurt's mail. But he hadn't dared to do so, knowing fully well that the mail account of an alleged murderer was one of the first thing Union of Human Planets police would look at to find proof. The postscript would raise too many unwanted questions.

It took him much too long to fall asleep that night. He spent what felt like hours rolling around trying to find a comfortable sleeping position, unable to fall asleep because it was too quiet, too cold, because he had too much space to stretch his limbs if he wanted to.

He wished he were with Erik, flying through space back to the orbit of the planet they'd first met on.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Erik wished he would have been surprised to run into Kurt Marko on his way to the meeting with the moon's controlling board to sign the mining contract. But after reading Charles' mail first thing upon arrival, he couldn't even muster enough fucks to act surprised. He was too occupied with reigning in his anger enough not to hit Marko in the face.

And to think the trip had been so nice and boring up to the mail. He had thought to contact Charles, but had then decided against it. What Charles had told him had been only a little concerning. Not enough to warrant endangering himself further. Surely, Marko couldn't have any proof. There was none, as far as Erik knew. Any proof had vanished together with Shaw.

"Can I help you with anything?" Erik asked Marko, when the man didn't make any move to start up a conversation. And, because he never had liked the man, added, "Teach you how to win bidding contests, for example?"

Marko fixed him with narrow eyes. "I wouldn't have thought you'd dare to show your face around this part of the galaxy where law still holds strong," he smirked. "What happened? Didn't you have enough employees left to send one here in your place because you had to fire everyone to win the contest? That's the only way you could have managed it. We all know Shaw Enterprises, oh, sorry, Phaver Etaireia doesn't make that much money nowadays."

"Of course it doesn't, Shaw Enterprises is dismantled and what's left underwent dramatic changes," Erik shrugged. "Frankly, today only its law department is left and I do hope they don't make that kind of money. It's a worrying thought, don't you think?" He bared his teeth in a dangerous approximation of a smile. "Phaver Etaireia, on the other hand, is thriving and we can well afford to win huge contracts. Unlike you, apparently. I heard you only lost by a couple of hundred thousands? Well, that's too bad, wasn't it, with how your own mines are running dry lately." He took a step forward. "If you'd excuse me now, I have to get to a contract signing."

"You just wait," Marko hissed as Erik stepped past him. "When I'm done with you and that rat of a stepson, you won't even be able to go back to service speeders."

Erik didn't bother to react to this. It was only said to get a raise out of him and he wouldn't let Marko even have this small victory. He remembered only too well how Charles had looked in his teens. That alone would have warranted shooting Marko in cold blood. If not for Charles, Erik would even have considered it.

Janos and Hank in tow, Erik marched down the corridor. At least it wasn't that far to the conference room anymore. The whole station was much smaller than he'd remembered it anyway. Or it was just him being bigger, and a lot less scared. It was only for the best that he wouldn't have to visit to the public spaces of the station, the crowded transfer and waiting areas. Money and it's benefits, what a blessing.

In the conference room, the delegates of the holding were already waiting for Erik. They exchanged greetings and pointless pleasantries until everyone felt comfortable enough to move on to business. The contract that was pushed across the table for Erik to sign was the same he'd been mailed as soon as they had been awarded the contract, only in printed form this time. Erik would have complained about the waste of paper at other times, but even he could see how in cases like this appearances were important.

He hadn't even capped the pen again yet when there was a harsh knock at the door. Nobody had time to answer, as seconds later, the door opened to reveal two heavily armoured policemen. They stepped inside and then to the side, revealing an officer without armour and, of course, Erik should have known when he'd felt the policemen's armour, Kurt Marko. Erik frowned at the policemen. He was pretty sure his mutation was on record, so why send armed forces that were more metal than human? Then again, they were in a metal space station so they might have reasoned it was no point in coming without armour.

"Erik Lehnsherr?" the officer asked, eyes already fixed on Erik.

Erik stood up, slowly, holding his hands up for the policemen to see. He'd rather if they didn't shoot him, after all. "That would be me," he said. "What can I do for you, officer?"

"You're under arrest for the murder of Sebastian Shaw," the officer said. If he hadn't been watching the officer's face closely, Erik would have missed the one uncomfortable second in which his eyes flickered over to Marko.

"On what basis?" Erik asked.

The officer's mouth thinned, as if he didn't like what he was about to say. "On basis of plausible allegations from citizens of high standing and the strong suspicion that you had both means and reasons to kill Mr Shaw," he said.

Erik raised an eyebrow. "All circumstantial, I gather." He'd had enough time to notice that they hadn't brought anything to stop him from using his powers, no inhibitor collars or anything the like. All the more proof that they didn't have anything substantial on him.

"Still, I have to ask you to come with us," the officer said.

Erik nodded. "Of course." He turned back to the delegates of the holding. "Gentlemen, I hope you keep in mind that our contract is between our companies, not between me and you." With that, he stepped up to the officer, holding out his hands. "Well, aren't you going handcuff me?"

"I see no reason to if you come with us out of your own free will," the officer said. "But I'll have to search you for weapons, I'm afraid."

Erik spread his arms. "Please."

It was then he noticed the smirk on Marko's face. "I pity you," Erik said while the officer patted him down for any hidden weapon, as if Erik would need one on a space station made mostly out of metal. "Really, this is the best you can do? That's low, even for somebody like you. You'll hear from my lawyer, Marko."

That only widened the smirk. "Oh really? Which one? The one that was working for Shaw before? Good luck getting her on your side," Marko said. "Officer, take him away."

The officer glared at Marko as if to say "You're not ordering me around, I do this because it's the law" before he straightened again. "If you'd be so kind then as to follow me to the brig, Mr Lehnsherr?"

Without sparing Marko another glance, Erik followed the officer outside the conference room, aware of the two huge chunks of metal trailing him, weapons ready.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Hank was pacing from the moment they were back on the Caspertina. It had been an uncomfortable end to the meeting, even though their counterparts had assured him that as Mr Lehnsherr had said, a signed contract was a contract and they intended to keep their side of the agreement as long as Mr Lehnsherr's company kept theirs. That was something, although Hank had no idea how good it would be in the long run.

Mr Lehnsherr's arrest, however, couldn't be good. Especially not with the accusations behind it. And from one of the most powerful, most influential industrialists in the Inner Planets at that, from what Hank had gathered. Of course he knew who Kurt Marko was, he was making appearances in society news often enough. So Mr Lehnsherr must have done something really bad to anger him. Hank couldn't imagine Kurt Marko to be petty enough to pull that kind of strings just over a lost contract.

That kind of allegations were bound to be expensive to deal with, too, even Hank could see that. But his boss, a murderer, that was something that was hard to believe. Sure, Lehnsherr looked dangerous, but only if you didn't know him. Hank had been afraid at first, he had to admit that much, but that had been ancient history after the first time Lehnsherr had come down to the labs and asked him all about their projects. That was the day when Hank had decided to stay loyal to a man he'd initially hadn't liked all that much. To now question that loyalty, for the first time in years of working for him...

Hank knew he was stalling the inevitable. He had to call back to the headquarter and tell them what had happened. Lehnsherr had looked awfully calm about the whole ordeal but that might have been a show for Marko. ...and Hank was doing it again. He stopped, his fur bristling a little in annoyance. There was no helping it, he had to call.

Hank frowned at Janos, who was lounging on one of the comfortable couches that were turning the ship's common room into something resembling a very fancy, but sterile café, if anyone asked Hank. It was beyond him why Janos still was here when he could be out defending Lehnsherr or something. Was he a lawyer or not? Hank let out a huff that sounded more like a low growl. It shouldn't be his job to report to Raven. She was kind of scary when she was angry.

Still, he shot Janos one more angry glance, before he left for the cockpit where he could make a private call. The company had state of the art encrypting on board the Caspertina, which was why he didn't even consider using one of the public communicators on the station, even though they were usually faster. And Hank was very sure he should treat the whole issue with as much secrecy as possible.

The connection didn't take long to stabilize and soon enough, he was facing his boss' right hand woman. She didn't look all that surprised to see him, only mildly annoyed. "Hank," she said and he could tell she was going for pleasant but it sounded more like a long-suffering sigh. "It's a surprise to see you. How did the meeting go? Do you have the contract?"

"Ms Darkholme, nice to see you too. I just mailed you a copy of the signed contract," Hank replied on autopilot. "As for the meeting, that's why I called. Mr Lehnsherr, Erik, he's been arrested. Right there, in the middle of the meeting."

This time, Raven didn't bother to hide her sigh. "But he did sign first?" she asked, rubbing circles around the edge of the telepathy inhibitors she was wearing.

"Shouldn't you ask me why he was arrested?" Hank muttered under his breath, away from the microphone. Louder, and toward Raven, he said, "He had just signed when the police came in. Two armoured policemen and an officer! They must think he's a homicidal maniac." He shook his head.

Raven looked to the side at somebody Hank couldn't see on camera and asked something he couldn't quite make out. "So, what was it about? Surreptitiously obtaining the mining rights?" she sighed. She looked tired and resigned. Hank was almost certain she had expected this to happen. But if she had know before they'd left, would she have let Lehnsherr come? It must be something that had come up later.

He shook his head. "No, actually, it was for the murder of one Sebastian Shaw," he said. "Uhm, Mr Lehnsherr didn't seem much surprised. Do you...?"

"If you were just about to ask me whether or not I believe he did it, Hank, stop right there!" Raven interrupted him. She was glaring a little. "I'm not going to discuss this over chat."

He grimaced, but nodded. "I was actually about to ask if he maybe knew it was coming." He shrugged. "How did he manage to piss off Kurt Marko so badly?"

"By screwing his stepson," Raven smirked, earning her a muffled protest from somebody in the background. "What?" Raven turned around to the person in the back. "Don't tell me it's not true! I do have eyes!"

Hank used the little interruption to compose himself again. He had the feeling that the blush on his face was showing despite the blue fur covering it. Eventually, Raven, still smirking, turned back and cleared her throat. "Well," she said. "Any chance that we might bail him out?"

Hank shrugged. "I don't know."

"Don't you have Janos with you? Let him find out." Raven rolled her eyes. "Don't make me and Emma fly in. I'd probably murder somebody if I have to spend an entire day with her in confined space."

Uncomfortably, Hank looked to the side. "I told Janos to go check on Erik but he said there's nothing to be done and refused," he said, quietly. It felt wrong to tell on a colleague but he was also deeply irritated by Janos' behaviour.

Raven frowned. "That's strange, to say the least," she sighed. "I'll ask Emma about this. But for now, go and tell him to get his fucking ass down to the brig and ask about bail money. No, wait, better idea, you do it and take him with you. I expect a report if he doesn't."

Hank swallowed and nodded. It didn't feel right, but the thought of not doing anything was worse. "Eh, should we also postpone our flight back then?" he asked. "Or would you rather have us back as soon as possible?"

Raven thought about it for a moment. "Stay put, I'd rather have somebody there until we have you some backup. The Caspertina isn't our only ship after all. But good thinking, Hank. Now get to work and report back after."

Hank nodded and sure enough, Raven cut off the connection, leaving him alone to deal with the problem at hand as well as he could.

 

**~*~**

 

"What now?" Charles asked when Raven had ended her call. "Kurt got him, didn't he?"

Raven fixed him with a long stare. "Yes," she said. Slowly, she added, "You do realize that right now, this isn't about you at all, do you? This is about Erik and we need to think about him and only him. You can wallow in self-pity when you have him back and apologize to him all you want, if you need to. For now, though..." She looked up at the ceiling. Charles could almost feel her think despite the inhibitors. "You could go find Emma and tell her we need a super villain and she's the only one I could think of."

Charles nodded. Raven was right after all. Crying over spilt milk never had gotten anyone anywhere. Time to take action. "Where can I find her?" he asked, getting up.


	6. Chapter 6

The legal department took up it's own floor. Only one, though, and the lobby was suspiciously spartan-looking. It was almost as if Erik only very begrudgingly granted them any funds at all. If he wouldn't have needed it, he might have closed it down all together.

Charles could feel a telepathic presence brushing up against his mind as soon as he stepped out of the elevator. To his surprise, he couldn't feel any telepathy blocking in the buildings structure on the entire floor. This was bound to be interesting.

 _Hello there?_  Charles projected at the presence still feeling out the surface of his mind.  _I'd rather you didn't, do that you know?_

There was the telepathic equivalent of a laugh, before a female voice answered,  _You come to my lair and expect me to stay out of your head? Sugar, that's not how it works. Last door at the end of the bullpen. I'm looking forward to meet you._

Charles pushed the door to the bullpen open and saw the door she had been referring to. It was hard to overlook, really. The few people currently working in the bullpen looked up to watch him for a moment, before they returned their attention to their tasks at hand. He could have imagined it but one or two of the looks had been pitying.

 _I could keep you out, you know?_  Charles sent back.  _Emma, I presume?_

 _And you're the reason Erik took off those annoying inhibitors,_  Emma responded. Charles had reached the door to her office then, so she added,  _Come in._

Charles pushed the door open. The office was small, but immaculate. Emma was sitting behind her desk, her face hidden behind a holo screen, typing quickly.  _I'll have time for you in a moment. Sit down,_  she told him. Charles pulled a chair over to sit down in front of her desk and waited for her to finish.

"Well," she said after a while. "What brings you down here? Did he finally manage to come across somebody who remembered he killed Sebastian?"

Charles blinked at her. "How do you know..." He nodded. "Erik was arrested this morning."

Emma waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. "They have no proof at all."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because I was there," Emma smirked. "If I weren't a telepath, I would be the perfect witness against him. But then again, without telepathy, I wouldn't know what he'd done." She shrugged.

"So you're not going to help him?" Charles could feel his hopes falter.

Emma shook her head. "I never said that. Just because he's guilty as charged doesn't mean I want him to get convinced. He's my boss, I don't want to lose my job here. And I for one like him, even though I'm quite sure that's not mutual." She grinned. "Not that I mind."

Charles raised an eyebrow. "Just what do would mean by that?"

Emma laughed. "May I?" She didn't even wait for a response before she pushed a memory at him, Erik, in this very office, shaking with barely suppressed rage, much more like the teen Charles had know than the man he was now, yelling at him, no, at Emma "I really hate you, you bitch!". Erik walked out and slammed the door shut behind himself. Charles looked at her in disbelief. "How did you do that?"

"Getting him to yell at me like that when all he wants is appear to be well-adjusted and  _nice_?" She pronounced nice as if that was a character flaw. "Honey, I knew him before all this. He has no reason to hide from me. So he doesn't."

Charles frowned at the implication. "I wouldn't mind if he stopped stowing away his feelings behind walls," he murmured.

"Oh, sugar, but he does care about showing them to you," she laughed. "That's the whole reason why he wanted to learn how to shield."

"You taught him?" Charles asked, incredulous. "He actually let you into his mind?"

"Well, if you put it like that... no, he didn't, that was the whole point of the exercise." From the look she shot Charles, she still was in on a joke she found immensely funny. Charles, on the other hand, didn't get it. "Ah, don't overthink it. We'll get him back, then you can make him tell you about the why yourself." Charles had the sinking feeling that this would be something Emma would very much enjoy watching.

"Get him back how?" Charles asked, suddenly remembering Erik's predicament. The small talk with Emma had almost made him forget about it. "As you said, he's guilty."

Again, Emma laughed. She picked up her pad and handed it over. "I'd expected a lot less trust in justice from somebody with your background. Justice is all about telling the truth people want to hear and filling the gaps with some nice little evidence. It's not like you have to convince an all-knowing being, you just have to convince a judge an. Any conman can do that, but only the best become lawyers to do it for a living." Charles looked at what she'd just given to him. Open on the tablet was a neat little folder labeled "S.Shaw trial" that hosted several files with names like "Readout worker's tracking chip M.Eisenhardt" and "airlock malfunction report".

"Do you need help collecting your jaw?" Emma chuckled.

"You... when... how...?" Charles shook his head. "Why?"

"Me, first thing after Erik didn't throw me out after he took over, by having access to all the data, both incriminating and exonerating," she was smirking again. "As I said, I like him. A lot more than Sebastian, at least. And, okay, I admit it, I'm also doing it because he'd hate it so much to be indebted to me."

Charles stared at the tablet in his hands. "Wow, this is... Emma, this is perfect. Thank you."

She shook her head. "Just doing my job, sugar. So, can you pass this on to Erik? I'm sure with this evidence he even can defend himself."

"Uhm, that would be a problem. He's in the brig."

"The brig?" Emma echoed. "Didn't he take Janos-!" She cursed. "Let me guess, Janos hasn't even tried to get him bailed out?"

Charles shook his head. "Hank's working on it but we're waiting for him to report back. What's the problem with Janos?"

"Probably that he had a motive to tell the enemy about Sebastian, but I'm not sure," Emma sighed. "This is my mistake. I knew Erik wanted me to have an eye on him. He didn't promote him for exactly that reason. I just thought, well, Janos didn't have a grudge on Erik. Nobody actually liked Sebastian, it just, you know, looked nice on your resume to work for him. Janos was still pretty new here when Sebastian died, still a little too caught up in the promises and had not yet seen enough of the misery that went with them." She shrugged. "We did a lot of cleaning up. I thought, well, Janos must have seen a lot of the nastier business, enough at least to be glad not to work for Sebastian anymore, but maybe I was wrong. Cursed inhibitors. One minute free reign of his mind and I could tell you anything you wanted, but no, stupid anti-telepath laws and electronics."

Glumly, Charles nodded. Having Hank's worries retold by Janos' direct superior made it look a lot like Janos was the reason Kurt Marko had even known about Erik's link to Shaw. A traitor in their midst. And, to make matters worse, half of their people who could now reach Erik.

Charles blanched as the realization hit.

"So you see the predicament we're in now," Emma sighed. "There's a number of options, but we of course need somebody who is authorized for any of these to work. Which, since Erik's gone, means either Raven as his proxy, or the person he's chosen to authorize for exactly this kinds of decisions in case he's gone. In other words," she smirked. "You."

"Me?" Charles groaned. "Just how much confidence does he have in me?" He shook his head. "I sometimes really can't believe him. You should really let Raven handle things until Erik's back. She's so much better suited than me."

Surprisingly, this didn't even let Emma's smile falter. "He said you'd say that. And to only then let you have some say in what we do." She chuckled. "Don't worry, if Erik thinks you're the right man for this task, you'll do, at least as far as I'm concerned." She folded her hands on the table. "Now, let me explain to you why you come in incredibly handy."

Charles opened his mouth to protest, but Emma cut him off with a gesture. "Trust me, you do, especially in case this goes to trial."

"But you already have more than enough to win any trial, don't you?" Charles protested. "And I'm not even allowed to testify anyway. No telepaths allowed to court."

Emma gave an elegant shrug. "So what? That's what you have reliable minions for. But, let me rephrase what I meant. I need you to prevent this incident from even going to court. I'm sure you could manage that."

"Emma, I think now you're overestimating me greatly," Charles objected. "I... If an attorney really wanted to bring this to court, I couldn't stop them."

"I wasn't talking about you stopping the legal system," she said, serious all of a sudden. "You have nowhere near enough weight to toss around for that, fancy old Inner Planet name or not. Sebastian had been able to do that, with the right friends and a lot of money, and some others can still, most of the politicians or businessmen of the old type, like Sebastian was. However, I'm not asking you to stop justice. I'm asking you to stop the accuser. Make it clear, very clear, to your stepfather that the moment this goes to court, everything he has, every business contact, every loan, every outstanding debt, will blow up in his face, no matter if it was tied to him as a person or his company. I'm sure that's something you can do. Talk to the right people. Make it known what he did to people who'd rather help you than him. Nobody wants a sore loser playing with the big guys. After all, who says they wouldn't be next?"

Charles gaped at her. "Remind me again why you're in charge of legal instead of strategy."

Emma showed off most of her teeth in something that wasn't a smile at all. "Because then I'd have Erik conquer the entire human galaxy of course."

"Okay, so, you want me to call up people I know, people with close but no intimate ties to my stepfather and tell them... what, exactly? That he had a rival apprehended under the false accusation of murder just because he lost a bidding contest?" Charles asked. In his mind, he was already coming up with people he could use for this, especially the few people who owed him a favor and would call others. Even if what he said remained a rumor, a rumor like this, with this much evidence to back it up, was hard to ignore. Even harder yet if there was a lot of money on the line. It could ruin Kurt faster than any disastrous lost contract would. "Or do we actually have something with a little more substance?"

Emma tipped her finger on the smooth surface of the desk a couple of times. "Hm, we should come up with some more, I think. It sounds bad enough at it is and will make people weary of him, but it really isn't much of a punishment, don't you think?"

Charles shrugged. "Kurt cares about appearances. That's why he... took care nobody noticed what he did to me when I was younger. So it might be enough to ruin his reputation. But, yeah, you're right, I doubt it'd be enough to have him step down from his accusations. Especially when most of the harm's already done. If we threaten to do it before calling up anyone, on the other hand, he might just laugh at us and call everyone himself just to show he has nothing to fear from me."

"What he did to you?" Emma echoed. She had narrowed her eyes. "Would you mind to elaborate?"

Charles hesitated. "I don't like to talk about it, but..." He raised two fingers to his temple. "I can show it to you, if you want. Some of it at least." When she nodded, Charles gave her some more seconds to brace herself, before he took some of his worst memories to push at her, only leaving out the worst of them all, the night after Erik had left. He hadn't even been able to tell Erik about that one yet, he couldn't show it to Emma.

Emma gasped as she went through the memories, more than once. Her features hardened, too. "Okay," she breathed when she was done. "Okay, I promise you, we'll take that bastard down so hard his great grandchildren will still feel the impact." She paused. "Do you... You wouldn't have any proof of that, aside from your memories, would you?"

Charles thought about it. Of course, some people had seen one or even a couple of the worse injuries, but they had all been working for Kurt and depended on their jobs so they had done their best not to  _see_  any of it. Older now, Charles could even understand why. But in his early teens it had been like the world on a whole had betrayed him. Even the doctor who had looked at some of the nastier injuries under Kurt's watchful eyes hadn't ever said anything. However, "There might be files on the injuries. I'd have to call up the doctor who's patched me up back then, of course, but there might still be at least some of his records left. I doubt Kurt would want to risk the PR disaster of me publicly announcing what a horrible person he is to his own stepson."

"Imagine the sob stories," Emma nodded. " _I only stayed as long as I did because I didn't want to leave my mother alone with this monster_." She sighed. "Would it help to dig up some of your old domestic staff? Maybe some witnesses even?"

Charles shook his head. "I doubt there are witnesses, Emma, really, Kurt always did his best to keep it... well, down."

"We'll see about this. But I promise I'll be discreet." She smiled. "Now, could you call that doctor right away? The sooner we have enough black mail material, the sooner we can help Erik."

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Emma did not have the decency to leave her office while Charles was calling, but at least she didn't tell him to go have the conversation in the hallway. She even pretended to go back to her work, although Charles could tell she was still listening.

He called anyway. It didn't matter. Nothing he'd say to the doctor would be something Emma didn't know about, not after he'd pushed his memories of the worst of it onto her.

It took him a while to find the doctor's number. He seemed to have moved planets, notably to a planet of which Charles  _knew_  Kurt Marko had no influence or contacts on. Charles went through a couple of further searches to make sure he'd found the right person, before he finally called.

Doctor Pratt had, from what Charles had been able to find on him, retired a few years back, so it wasn't much of a surprise that it took a while before the connection was answered. "Pratt, who's calling?" the old man's voice came from the ear piece Emma had lend Charles.

"Doctor Pratt, I don't know if you still remember me, but my name is Charles Xavier," Charles said hastily. He held his breath then, not sure if Doctor Pratt would even want to talk to him. He sure would want to forget about Kurt, or he wouldn't have chosen that planet to retire to.

"Oh," was all Doctor Pratt after a long while, only to fall silent for some more moments. Charles could hear some clicking on the other end of the connection, though. "Is this about what your stepfather did to you? Are you finally pressing charges?" The old man sighed. "I always felt bad, you know? But there wasn't much I could have done, not without risking harm to my family. But I always felt bad. So I kept the notes. I'm so glad you finally called."

A couple of heartbeats, all Charles could do was blink. It took a worried glance from Emma to snap him out of his stupor. "You... you're glad I called?" he asked. Never had he expected to hear the doctor say anything the like. Sure, he'd hoped Pratt would agree to help, but not for him to offer his help freely, without any coaxing. Back when he'd suffered through it, he had only been able to see him as another one of Kurt's employees, who all didn't give a rat's ass about him. Growing older he'd realized that it wasn't all that simple, but that still didn't mean he could see any of them having a heavy conscience about it.

"Yes. I was wondering if I should call you myself." Another sigh. "But I had no idea whether you even wanted to hear from me ever again. After all, I just patched you up and helped your stepfather to keep it quiet. I hated myself for it. I still hate myself. I should have done something. So... I did, although it wasn't much. I have all my reports and even documentation of some of the injuries still on file. Feel free to use them as you see fit." Pratt lowered his voice to a whisper. "Between the two of us, I really hope you make that bastard bleed. You're not still living with him under the same roof, I hope?"

Charles laughed with relief. Erik wasn't out of the brig yet, but things were suddenly looking a lot brighter. "No, Doctor Pratt, I moved out a while ago. Never looked back, either."

"Good, good," Pratt sounded really pleased. "So, can you give me your address, so I can send you the file? Or do you want some more insights?"

 _Would you mind if I gave Doctor Pratt your business mail instead of mine? I figure it's a lot more secure,_ Charles send to Emma as soon as he was sure he had her attention. She nodded in reply, so he said to Pratt, "Actually, I'd rather you send it to my lawyer." He dictated Emma's address.

Pratt whistled through his teeth when they were done. "Are you now working for Phaver Etaireia? Good for you, boy, one only hears good things about that company."

"Something like that," Charles replied. "Anyway, thank you so much, you've been a great help."

"Take care of yourself, boy," Pratt said, before the connection ended.

Charles sighed as he put down the earpiece. "That went much better than expected."

Emma raised an eyebrow. "You could say that. I just got a mail with the subject 'Medical reports Ch. Xavier'. Looks like he really kept the files at hand and together."

Charles nodded. "He sounded like it, too." He brushed his hair back from his forehead. "Okay, what now?"

Emma smiled. "Now, you go and bother Raven again so I can do my work without having to worry about somebody with actual morals looking over my shoulder." She made a shooing motion towards him.

Shaking his head, Charles smiled back at her. "Thank you, Emma," he said, before he did her the favor and left her to whatever work she wanted to do. She was right, he'd rather have nothing to do with her methods.

 

***~*~***

 

Raven was sitting in her office, drafting plans on what contracts they would need to outsource to be able to mine on the moon, when the task bar of her computer blinked with an incoming call from the Caspertina. She hit accept and, without wasting times on greetings or other pleasantries, said, "Speak, how did it go?"

As if Hank's worried blue-furred face wasn't telling enough. "They wouldn't release him."

"Not even for a couple of millions?" Raven huffed. She'd never been to the Inner Planets before but that sounded hard to believe for her. Money solved everything out here, after all.

Hank shook his head. "They said he's accused of a high profile murder and owns a ship docked to the station, the risk of flight is, apparently, too high to bail him out."

"And Janos couldn't do anything about it?" she sighed. "Just asking."

Hank looked from left to right, clearly uncomfortable. He even leaned forward, as if he suspected to be overheard. "I don't believe he even tried, to be honest. And..." He paused. "He didn't come back to the ship with me, said he was going to fetch something to eat, even though the Caspertina is well-stocked."

"Is he trying to be suspicious?" Raven groaned. "Okay, thank you, Hank. Good work. Call back in if anything changes."

They said their good-byes and Raven ended the connection, just in time for the knock at her door. "Come in," she called. Charles entered her office. He looked a little lost in thought but a lot more cheerful than when she'd last seen him. Things with Emma must have gone well. Still, she asked, "Does Emma think they have a case here?"

Charles directed a smile at her that made her at least partially see what Erik saw in him. He was cute, but seemed still a little too inept for her liking. "Emma thinks she could crush the prosecution if this should go to court. But..." He rubbed the side of his neck. "There's also a plan that might prevent it from ever getting that far."

Raven raised her eyebrow. "What's that old snake planning now?"

"She wants me to threaten Kurt," Charles sighed.

Raven blinked. "And? Do you think it'll work? Or, wait, do you even want to?"

"He would deserve it," Charles shrugged. "I don't know yet, though, I need to think about it."

"Good," Raven nodded. As she stretched to get a few kinks out her back, her glance fell at the clock. "How about you head home and get a full night's sleep before you make any rash decisions? It's not like we could do much more today, anyway. You can drive, right? Or if you don't want to, we also have a couple of auto-driving speeders. Just get down to the garage and ask somebody in the office there to give you the keys to a company speeder."

Charles yawned and nodded. "Thank you, Raven."

"Just doing my job," she waved him off. "Good night, Charles!"

"Good night, Raven."

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Another night spend alone in the small, empty bed in Erik's bedroom. This one even more miserable than the last, now that he wasn't just missing Erik but also knew that Erik was most likely spending his night on the brig of a far away space station. When he'd finally fallen asleep Charles had dreamed one of those dreams he'd used to have a lot, as a teen and even in his early twenties, before he'd given up all hope that Erik would one day come back for him. It could have been just because Erik was currently there, but he dreamed about standing at the departure deck of that very space station, things packed and ready to leave wherever Erik would come to take him with him.

Erik had promised him, one night when they were hiding from Cain and Kurt in the back of one of the vintage speeders Kurt collected and Erik had serviced. One day, when Erik would have succeeded in whatever he was trying to achieve--now, Charles knew, that had been revenge for his parents and his home--he would get them two tickets off-planet and to some place on the Outer Planets where nobody would bother looking for Charles and build a new life there.

Charles woke up to what had become of the dream they'd once had together. Erik had build a life on his own on one of the Outer Planets. Only, that was just the petty part of the truth and Charles had a moment of terrible clarity when he realized it. Erik had not just build a life for himself. Well, he had, and had apparently given a livelihood to hundreds, maybe thousands of people. He also had found himself a new goal, something else to strife for, a  _good cause_  even. But that was not all that was to Erik's new life. Sure, on the outside it had looked like it and for a while even from the inside.

However, it had been far to easy for him to incorporate Charles in this life. At least, if he hadn't planned for that eventuality from the start.

The empty apartment right next to Erik's own. How all of Erik's inner circle seemed to know all about him. How Moira had been so willing to give him a task Charles actually liked instead of Erik just making use of the abilities and experience Charles had as an accountant.

Now that he was thinking about it, it all seemed so obvious.

He wished he could ask Erik about this, if Erik had had any plans to come back for him at one point if he hadn't gone himself. Charles was sure he could have asked Raven, or maybe even Emma if he felt particularly masochistic, but he'd rather hear it from Erik himself. Just another reason to get him back soon, Charles figured.

It was all Charles needed to reach a decision on whether he should risk threatening Kurt or not. He wanted Erik back, badly. He was, finally, once he allowed himself to, mad enough at Kurt to outweigh the years of ingrained fear of him and his son. Getting Erik arrested, that had just been one step too far. Charles couldn't even feel bad about involving Emma and her ruthless methods now. The only regret he had was not getting somebody like her sooner to stand up against Kurt. Beat him with his own methods.

Before he even got around to make himself breakfast, he send a mail to Raven to ask her about any new developments over the night. He also noticed he had a new mail from Emma which he read over his breakfast toast. She was basically telling him that everything was settled and all ready to go once he was ready to use it. Charles figured that he could thank her later, but saved the files she had attached just to be on the safe side.

After breakfast, he packed enough clothes for a short trip and headed back over to the company. Raven was already there, or maybe she hadn't even left for the night. She smiled a tightlipped smile at him when she noticed his baggage. "Decided to head out, Mr Xavier?"

Charles nodded. "Can't leave Erik rot in that brig forever, can I now? Not after all he'd done for me."

"And you're not doing it to see you stepfather's expression? Not even a little bit?" Raven raised an eyebrow. "Because that's what I'd be coming for."

"A little bit, maybe," Charles shrugged. "But Erik's more important than that."

Raven clapped her hands together. "Now, that's what I wanted to hear from you. Good to see you ready, because you're heading off planet at noon. Emma will come, too."

"What about you?" Charles asked.

"Well, somebody has to stay and keep the company running." She let out a theatrical sigh. "And it looks like that'll always be me. Gotta warn you, though, none of our other passenger ships are even close to being as fast or as comfortable as the Caspertina, so you're in for a day and a half in some tuna tin sized vessel. Hope you don't mind it too much."

Charles shook his head. "As long as it gets me where I want to go, it's fine. I came here on public transportation, remember?"

Raven shuddered visibly. "Oh, good thing I never depended on that."

"It's not as bad as people want you to believe," Charles shrugged. "Is there anything I can help you with? Or any update from Hank?"

Raven raised an eyebrow at his first question, as if to ask if he was seriously asking her if she would allow him to fuck up her workflow, but graced his second question with an answer, at least, "Hank went to see Erik this morning. Erik's not too happy about his situation, but otherwise fine." She grinned. "Hank said something about Erik being 'uncharacteristically grumpy', so I assume Erik's either annoyed or stressed enough not to bother with keeping up his nice persona all the time. Want me to give Hank a message to pass on?"

Charles thought about it for a moment. There were a lot of things he wanted to tell Erik, but most of them weren't appropriate for a message like that. So, in the end, he settled for, "Tell Hank to pass on the following: 'I figured out why you were pouting. You remind me of me when I was younger.'"

"That's it?" Raven shook her head. "And here I thought you would want to swear your undying love to Erik."

Charles smiled. "Who says that's not the message?"


	7. Chapter 7

A day and a half in confined space would only have been half as bad if Charles had had much else to do but worry. He had Emma to talk to, which was at least something, but he'd prefer not to spend the entire trip talking to her. Heavens knew what she could do with the information she'd learn from it. So when he'd remained mostly monosyllabic aside from meaningless platitudes, she'd basically given up on him and hidden behind her holo pad, doing only the devil knew what.

Charles had tried to read. It had worked at first, for about a chapter. But after that, his thoughts had drifted off, again and again, until he noticed he'd not processed any word on the last three pages he'd read. The bad thing was he couldn't even decide on one thing to worry about. When he wanted to worry about Erik, his thoughts wandered off to facing Kurt before. When he was worrying what he should tell Kurt once he met again the man he'd hoped, no sworn to himself, to never meet again, his thoughts came back to Erik, how he would pull him into his arms and tell him either that he was sorry for being slow or that it was really creepy what he'd done or both and then some. He tried dozing, but that didn't work much, either.

"Don't make me stick the not broken inhibitors to your skull," Emma threatened when she'd finally had enough. "Your shields are leaking and you're giving me a headache. If you want to do something productive, go read what Pratt gave you or, for all I care, plot your dream honeymoon. But please stop driving yourself mad. You'll take me down with you and I won't stand for that."

Feeling like a silly schoolboy scolded by his teacher, Charles took his holo pad and opened the files. He had to hand it to Emma, she was right that reading something related to his worries kept them at bay. Instead, of course, he had to remember some painful memories, all of them meticulously written down in neat reports, in full detail and with some very insightful, yet disturbing conclusions how the injuries could have happened to Charles. It was all surprisingly close to the uncomfortable truth, though there was more than one occasion where Pratt had guessed 'adult' when it had really just been Cain. With the reports in hand Charles found it even more incredible that Kurt had managed not to get any outsider involved, or heaven's forbid, his educational methods criticized.

When Charles couldn't take it anymore, he put the pad down and curled up on his bunk. It was a mercy, really, that sleep came quick that time. He didn't even need Emma to make her threat real about just making him fall asleep.

 

***~*~***

 

They reached the station in the early morning hours of the Inner Planets standard space time, four days after the Caspertina. Despite the early hour, the station itself was busy all around the clock, thanks to its status as the main travel hub to and from the planet it was orbiting. Every minute, there were ships coming and going, both small, private vessels like theirs and big commercial flights. They even had to wait for a dock to open up for a few minutes, before they could side their ship with the station and begin the necessary processes, like pressure and oxygen level adjustments, so they could leave the ship without trouble.

Their first way led them to the Caspertina. Charles was not surprised to find only Hank there, not after what he'd heard about Janos. Emma vanished into the cockpit right away, probably to call Raven, so Charles had a bit of time to catch up with Hank about what had happened during the past day. Erik seemed to be holding up alright, although he was getting more and more irritated every time Hank visited. The message Charles had send had only been received with a nod, as Erik hadn't been willing to give his reply through Hank. It had Charles reassure Hank that they were here to solve their not so little problem as soon as possible. When he mentioned that it was mostly Emma's plan, Charles noticed both relief and a deeply rooted, weary sort of worry on Hank's face.

"In my function as your lawyer," Emma announced as she stepped out of the cockpit again. "I booked a meeting room and send an invitation to an informal meeting with 'my client about urgent business' to your stepfather. I've given him two hours, that should be enough for you to get cleaned up and over there."

Charles nodded, feeling glum again all of a sudden. He wasn't sure what he'd expected but now that the meeting with Kurt was imminent, it all was happening too fast. Catching onto his feelings, Emma snatched him by the shoulders and steered him towards the Caspertina's very luxurious on-board bathroom. If she'd been able to, Charles was sure she'd locked him in from the outside until he'd remembered how 'stay calm and make yourself presentable' worked. As things were, he had to do so all on his own, only able to rely on years of training in exactly this. Swallow your nervousness and if that failed, at least let your hands work on auto-pilot through all the necessary steps of shaving and grooming.

Emma was waiting impatiently for him when he stepped back out of the bathroom. She had bullied Hank into changing into his nice set of clothes, too, which apparently meant that he wasn't going alone. "Are you going to play my body guards?" Charles tried to joke, but the glum feeling he still harboured tainted his voice.

"Of course," Emma said evenly. She presented him with an old-fashioned brief case that would at least make some impression, indicating that they had physical copies as well as the digital originals. "You'll get all the help you need and more dealing with him. It'd be enough to dislike him from what he did to Erik, but what you told me, well..."

Hank nodded. "You can count on me looking scary," he said, baring his rather impressive fangs.

Emma led their way out of the private docking areas to the business deck. She navigated the endless, similar looking hallways with such ease Charles had to wonder if she hadn't spent a longer period of time on this, or at least a similar, station. The meeting room she led them to was empty when they arrived. It didn't seem to bother her, so Charles decided to go with it. He'd have preferred to get over with it as quickly as possible, not waiting idly for Kurt to show up. It left him more time to worry, even with Hank and Emma standing right behind him, both a threat with their mere presence.

He was just wondering for the thousandth time how Kurt would react and if Hank would have to bodily restrain the man if worst came to worst, when the door opened. It admitted two men unbeknownst to Charles-- _lawyers_  Emma informed him, mental voice full of disdain--before Kurt finally followed. If he was surprised to see Charles, he did not show it. Instead, his eyes flickered over to Hank in something like recognition, before they hardened as they settled on Charles. He took the seat on the opposite of the conference table, his lawyers sitting down to his left and right.

"Well, Charles, if this isn't a surprise," Kurt said once he'd settled. Charles just stared at him. It made people nervous, he had learned a long time ago and in this case, he wanted Kurt nervous for once. "I'd never have thought you would leave the family business to do the dirty work for some upshot. Couldn't you have at least find a job to fit your social standing? I'm disappointed in you." One of the lawyers leaned over to whisper something to Kurt but he was cut of with a crude gesture. "So, your 'lawyer' said you had some unpleasant business to discuss? I assume this is about Lehnsherr, yes?"

Charles pressed his lips together. "Yes and no," he said, evenly. "I want you to pull whatever strings you pulled to get him where he's now again to get him out of there."

Kurt actually laughed at that. "And what if I don't? Will you mind-whammy me into doing so? I've taken precautions. You wouldn't get away with that kind of transgression."

"Actually, I thought you would just see it as the most sensible option you have." Charles slid the holo pad with Pratt's medical reports over the table, purposefully to one of the lawyers and not Kurt himself. He never broke eye contact with Kurt while he did. "You see, Miss Frost here and her department are rather well paid and should be earning their money's worth, so I had her put together this little file of upcoming charges against you. That is, if you don't take my offer to buy yourself free first. There are also mails ready to be send out to any and all of your business contacts and relevant media telling them about what you did two days ago. I wonder how many of them will want to continue doing business with you once they learn that you got a man send to prison just because he beat you to a contract. I'm sure you, too, will find meeting my demands the sensible course here."

Kurt glowered at him for another moment, before he finally caved to the lawyer who'd been trying to attract his attention all the while Charles was talking. There was a hushed conversation between the three men, urgent from what the lawyers sounded like and angry from the sound of Kurt's voice. Charles idly wondered if he should risk it pushing past their inhibitors and take a look, but deemed it not worth the risk nor trouble. After a while, the lawyers sat back up and frowned angrily at Emma, who, Charles was sure without checking, was smiling pleasantly back at them. Kurt himself had a hard time hiding the fact he was fuming, a expression Charles had learned to associate with an imminent blow. This time, it didn't come.

"You're playing very dirty, Charles," Kurt hissed. "Would you really do that to your own father? Your brother? You'd ruin us, for some rogue who murdered a honest, good man?"

Charles was glad he'd learned to wear a neutral mask in public at a very young age and never unlearned it. How he wished he could have just jumped to his feet and yelled at Kurt that Erik was worth more and better than Kurt would be in a thousand lives, that Shaw had most likely deserved to die and that it was no wonder Kurt thought Shaw'd been a good man because he was not much better himself. But instead of doing so, he remained seated, calm and collectedly staring at Kurt. "Let's not confuse baseless accusations with facts, shall we?" He smiled in the one way he knew would drive Kurt even madder, the one that said 'I'm laughing at you because you didn't get the joke' according to both Kurt and Cain. "And I really have to wonder why you're so surprised that I play dirty. After all, I learned it all from you."

Kurt huffed. "I want to think about your...  _offer_." He spat the last word.

"Two hours," Emma said before Charles could answer.

Kurt glared at her like that would make her drop dead and all of this go away. "Fine," he growled, after both his lawyers had decided to take action and urgently persuade him. "But it's nowhere near enough to go through all of this."

"That shouldn't be a problem, seeing as most of them were inflicted by you," Charles said, keeping his voice even. "I'm sure you'll remember."

Kurt stood abruptly. For a second, Charles was sure he'd jump across the table and try to strangle him, but that moment passed without anything happening. Instead, Kurt spat, "You ungrateful brat. You no longer have the right to call yourself my son." He turned to leave, his lawyers scrambling to follow him.

"I never was, Kurt," Charles said, softly, but loud enough to be heard, to make Kurt pause at the door. "And just so you know, by now, I want you to hate me. I always thought you already did, but if this is not the case, just think about it like this: It makes this whole business so much easier for the both of us, doesn't it?"

Kurt indicated a shake of his head, just for a second, before he stormed out, his rage so strong not even the inhibitors could contain all of it. Charles staggered in his seat, both from the feeling and the exhilaration of having dealt with this conversation. He could feel Emma putting her hand on his shoulder to steady him for a moment, as well as her voice whispering something into his mind that sounded a lot like  _well done_.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


They waited aboard the Caspertina for Kurt's decision. After the brief high, Charles was now back to nervous and fidgety again. There were still so many what ifs that it was hard for him to believe that Kurt would back down until he had proof. Emma had made him sit down when his pacing had started to get on her nerves and then had left for the cockpit altogether when even that hadn't helped putting him at rest. She was probably reporting back to Raven now, or waiting for a response from Marko. Hank tried to strike up a conversation with Charles a few times, but not even his enthusiasm for the experiments and their development could capture Charles' attention for long.

It took the full two hours until they got a response, and it wasn't even one from Marko himself in the end. Emma forwarded the message to Charles, rather than coming out of the cockpit to show it to him directly. She'd added a frowny face to it, but Charles had to admit that a notification by the station police that they could come pick up Erik Lehnsherr was about as good as they'd wanted. They'd still keep the files, of course. Neither Charles nor Emma had ever intended to destroy them. It was better to keep a trump like this close, especially against a man like Kurt.

As casually as he could, Charles put down his pad down after reading the mail. He didn't want to seem too overeager to see Erik again, even though he was also sure he didn't have to hide any emotion from anyone on the ship. Still, old habits died hard. "Would you like to come with me to the brig to collect Erik?" he asked Hank, hoping for him to agree. Charles couldn't help but feeling weary now that he'd seemingly succeeded in black-mailing Kurt.

To his relief, Hank got up as well and smiled at him. "Of course, I'm glad to."

"Thank you," Charles said. He went to the cockpit to tell Emma they were headed out but he was only waved away, as she was busy with a call.

Once back on the station, Charles left it to Hank to lead the way. He hadn't been to the station police nor the brig the couple of times he'd been here before, unlike Hank who'd been paying Erik visits a couple of times over the past two and a half days.

The officer in charge greeted Hank with a nod that spoke from recognition. "I'll fetch him," he said, before heading to the back, presumably where the cells were located. Charles and Hank were left alone in the room, even though it was only for a couple of minutes.

Charles was able to feel Erik as soon as he stepped out of the cell. Immediately, he curled his telepathy around his old friend's mind, basking in the relief and familiarity they were both feeling.  _Hi there,_  Erik carefully pushed the thoughts at him while he pretended to be listening to the officer lecturing him about how he was not released because they were convinced of his innocence.  _I knew you'd come for me._

_I'm glad you're alright,_  Charles sighed into Erik's mind. He curled his telepathy a bit more closely around it, mostly to assure himself that Erik was there, for real, and would be there for a long while still.  _You're never allowed to go on a trip on your own ever again. The things we had to do to get you out..._

_We?_  Erik inquired, just as he followed the officer back into the room where Charles and Hank were still waiting.

_Later,_  Charles told him, unable to stop himself from smiling at Erik when their eyes met. Erik's eyes softened, before he, too, smiled for a brief moment.

It still took a while before they could leave the police station. The officer forced first Erik and then Charles--though Hank could have, too, as the officer only cared that it was somebody picking Erik up-- to go through some lengthy paperwork, mostly to assure that they knew exactly where they could find Erik, or if that failed one of his friends, in case they'd new doubts about his innocence. Charles didn't pull his telepathy back for even a moment while they were filling all the forms the officer insisted on.

The first thing Erik did when they finally left the station was to clap Hank on the shoulder and thank him, just for a second, before he pulled Charles into a hug. Only briefly, though, because then his lips searched out Charles' for a kiss. "Thank you," he whispered, before they broke apart again and Erik repeated the words louder, to include the flustered looking Hank as well.

Their walk back to the Caspertina was mostly in silence. Erik didn't seem particularly willing to talk and Charles was quite satisfied to just be able to feel out his mind for a while, anchor himself back in place. After a bit, Erik took Charles' hand and they exchanged quick smiles, but that was most of it. They were still out in the open, still in public, and neither of them was comfortable enough, especially not in an Inner Planets system, to display an real affection. It had to wait until they were back on the Caspertina.

The second the airlock closed behind them, shutting out the station and they were truly in a private space, Charles threw his arms around Erik and kissed him as if his life depended on it.  _Never do that to me again,_ he said.  _Never ever, you hear me? I don't want to lose you a second time. Almost losing you a second time was bad enough. I need you, Erik. I love you, so bad._

Erik returned the kiss, holding Charles right in place pressed up against him.  _I promise. I do, too._  Erik wouldn't have had to word it, his entire mind thrummed with his love and adoration and gentle warmth. It was a feeling Charles wished he could fill in bottles and keep for bad days. He made sure to push his own feelings right back at Erik, too, so he too knew how much he was loved.

After some while, when they were done kissing and even mostly done with hugging, Charles murmured, "You should go call Raven. I'm sure she wants to hear from you."

"Always so caring for others," Erik grumbled, but the was no real protest in his voice. "Can't you take a minute for yourself?"

Charles pushed against his chest, careful not to actually push Erik away. "I did take a minute for myself. More than that, even. Now it's time to think of others, too. Especially after we scared off poor Hank already."

"Huh, he's gone," Erik murmured as if he'd noticed it just now. He still stole yet another kiss from Charles, without even looking remotely sorry when Charles frowned at him. "I have a reply to the message you sent me, by the way. It's 'Now you finally remind me of someone I know'."

"Of yourself?" Charles guessed. He'd done some pretty reckless and ruthless things today, now that he was thinking about it.

But Erik shook his head. "Of yourself, when you have dreams for a better, brighter future." He leaned in to kiss Charles once again.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Emma was waiting for them in the Caspertina's common room when they stepped in. One look at her was all it took to make Erik groan in what sounded almost like despair. "You," was the word Charles could make out, together with Erik's thoughts turning a little confused and a bit more resentful, even though most of what he felt was still a general bliss from being close to Charles that made Charles flush a little when he thought about it. He made sure to keep Emma out of Erik's mind at all cost.

"Did you have a nice little make-out session in the airlock?" Emma smirked. Her expression became a little softer when she looked at Charles, but that was just for the second before her eyes returned to Erik. She hadn't been exaggerating when she'd said that Erik disliked her greatly, Charles suddenly realized. Just to make sure nothing would happen, he put a hand on Erik's arm.  _She helped me a lot,_  he told Erik just for good measure, but that only sparked more irritation.

_Helped how? By somehow, in her snake ways, bending the truth in a way to use it as a weapon?_  Erik's mental voice was close to a snarl, while his physical one had gone past that when he snapped at Emma, "That's none of your damn business."

"Erik," Charles warned.  _She didn't need to bend anything, Erik. She just nudged me in the right direction._

Emma shrugged. "I just hoped you'd tell me anyway." She paused. "Raven said to call her as soon as you're here. Said she wanted to discuss strategy, but I'm sure she just wants to see you unharmed."

Erik gave a curt nod of understanding, before he stalked off toward the cockpit. Charles stayed behind, sighing as he looked at Emma. "There was really no need to antagonize him like that."

"Was there now? I wanted to talk to you alone before we head back and it was the easiest way to get him to leave your side." Emma smiled. "And don't tell me it's not enjoyable to see how fast you can set him off when you know how to get under his skin. To think most people would call him calm and collected..." She patted the couch next to her. "Come sit."

With a glance over to the cockpit door and his mind brushing over Erik's surface thoughts to make sure they would be alone for at least a couple more minutes, Charles walked over to the couch and sat down next to Emma, leaving as much space between them as possible on what was no bigger than a regular two seater. He was not too keen to learn Erik's reaction should he find out Charles was bonding, or worse, friends with somebody he regarded as hostile at worst, not entirely friendly at best. At least, Charles corrected his thoughts, not today. They should have a talk about this, at some point, later, preferably with nobody within earshot.

"You did well today." Emma patted Charles awkwardly on the shoulder. "Don't let your conscience tell you otherwise, or some left over, misguided loyalty to that bastard, or anything like it." Her voice was low, but firm nonetheless. It was obvious that she didn't like this topic very much, but still wanted to talk about it to Charles and Charles alone. He wondered why she wasn't just telling him telepathically, but instead, she'd even put up mental shields strong as diamond to shut him out, and possibly, her own feelings in. "He did bad things to you in your past and therefore it's alright for you to sever any ties left to him if you don't want to. It's not your fault that he let you use his faults and mistakes against him. It's his, and his alone. Don't beat yourself up. You did good, exceptionally good by standing up against him when you could. And should he try to get back at you, or Erik, I just want you to always remember people will have your back. Any time."

Charles gave her a long look, before he nodded. "Thank you."

"You can come to me any time you need to," she added. "If you want to talk about it. Or anything you think I could understand. Significant others are all nice and well, but one needs friends, too."

"Is that why you stayed with Erik, even though...?" Charles asked, unable to stop himself. For a second, he was afraid he might have overestimated what he was allowed to know about her, that Emma would retract her offer, but then she pressed her lips together and nodded. "I needed to stand up against him, for myself, and..." She shrugged. "I guess it was the only way I saw after, well... Don't get me wrong, I don't regret working for Erik. But my original intentions were a lot more egoistic." She took a moment to regain her posture and the usual disdainful air she wore around herself like an armour. "But enough about that, looks like your lover boy is almost ready to join us again."

Charles looked up, right in time to see the door to the cockpit slide open. Erik smiled at him briefly, before he turned his attention to Emma. "You, Hank and, preferably, if you can get your claws on him, Janos are going to take the Caspertina home. Start as soon as you're ready and have everyone on board. Do me a favor and leave the interrogation to me, though. I'm sure you can spend a day pretending nothing's wrong," he growled.

"Understood," Emma nodded. "So, you don't want me to have him ready for a conversation with you upon arrival, either?"

Erik shook his head. "Raven will take care of it, once you arrive." He turned to Charles, "Can you wait another minute? I need to grab my things."

When Charles nodded, Erik went though another door, most likely the one leading to the cabins.

"Enjoy your trip back," Emma said much too gleefully, as if she knew already what they would do once the ship was safely at warp speed and on auto-pilot.

 

***~*~***

 

It turned out, Emma was not exactly right with her guess at their activities. Sure, Charles and Erik had gone straight to the bigger one of the two cabins, the one with a bunk just barely large enough for two, but they just lay there, holding each other. It would still take a while, Charles knew, until he could think about more than just hugging Erik close and drink in his presence. Erik was much the same, with the only movement he made being the hand he ran over Charles' hair periodically.

Charles could feel Erik's mind getting restless after a while. He had been just about to fall asleep but that alone was enough to jerk him fully awake again. "What's wrong?" he asked, running a hand up and down Erik's side to soothe him.

"I..." Erik shook his head. "It's nothing, really. Just, me being stupid, I guess. I was wondering what your plans are now. You got what you came for, after all."

"You're right," Charles hummed. He gently tilted Erik's head so he could kiss him. "I got exactly what I came for. Which is why I don't want to leave, as long as you'll have me."

Erik exhaled with relief. "As I said, I was just being stupid." He tightened his grip around Charles. "And if you don't want to, you'll never have to leave."

"You know," Charles sighed, thinking back at how hurt Erik had looked at him those first days after meeting him again. "If you want me to, I can be like you. Like you're now, that is. But... I' not sure if that's really what you want."

Erik shook his head. "I was just... It hadn't been what I'd expected. But I wouldn't trade you for anyone or anything, no matter who you are or who you'll become. We'll figure it out."

Charles laughed. "You know, your new, nice and reasonable self was hard to stomach, too." He took Erik's face in his hands and kissed him, rolling them around so he was lying on top of Erik while he was at it. "I still love you," he breathed against Erik's lips, before kissed him again, heated and wet. He smiled when he felt Erik's hands coming to rest on his butt.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Charles was exhausted when they arrived back at the headquarter of Phaver Etaireia. He felt like he hadn't slept at all during the flight, even though he hadn't left the bed once he and Erik had lain down there. The bunk had been a bit too small for two, Charles could feel it in every single one of his aching bones and sore muscles, even though all of that wasn't just the fault of the bed.

He wished they could just have gone home right away, but Erik insisted that he'd rather deal with Janos right away than give him any more opportunity to sabotage. Charles knew he had a point there, but he'd still protested, just for the sake of it. Erik had given him a wry smile and merely shaken his head in reply.

So half an hour after returning to the planet's surface, Charles found himself standing behind Erik's desk, with Erik sitting next to him and waiting for Raven to bring Janos up. She'd kept him in so Erik could question him as soon as they'd landed and they wouldn't give Janos any opportunity to let evidence disappear. As far as Charles knew, Emma had searched Janos' desk when she'd arrived. If she'd found anything, she hadn't told them yet, even though Charles was sure she'd send Erik a mail as soon as she had anything.

Raven knocked before she entered, a courtesy she'd usually ignore. But appearances meant a lot today. It was just like the meeting with Kurt, or any of Erik's business meetings. They wanted Janos nervous, which was also why Charles wasn't sitting over at the couch.

And nervous he was, even before he looked up from the floor and at Erik. Guilt was written all over his face and his body language practically screamed that he wanted to be anywhere but where he was at the moment. Charles was surprised he hadn't bolted yet. As if on cue, the incoming mail symbol on Erik's pad lightened up. As if he had all the time in the world, Erik pulled the mail up and read through it. Charles was pretty sure, even if it hadn't been Emma's report on what she'd found in Janos' desk and on his work pad, Erik would have read it anyway, just to let Janos sweat some more. Important as the mail was, however, Erik made especially sure that Charles could read everything as well.

On the pad had been a few mails between Janos and an address Charles recognized to be in the pattern Kurt tended to use for whenever he wished not to be easily identified. The language of those mails was coded to a degree, but it wasn't hard to guess from the context what it meant. Emma had also fond that Janos had broken into her personal files on Shaw, the incident on the Caspertina and how Erik had legally gained control of the late Shaw's businesses. She sounded furious at that part, asking Erik to leave whatever was left of Janos when he was finished with him to her, and even asking for forgiveness that she hadn't secured the files any better. There wasn't anything incriminating, of course, but it was enough to make people pause and question Erik and the legitimacy of certain aspects of his past. Erik raised an eyebrow at her beg for forgiveness, but Charles could feel him file it away for later when he had time to deal with it.

"So," Erik said after a long while. He put the pad down and folded his hands on the desk. "Care to explain why you didn't do your job as my lawyer?" He raised a finger when Janos opened his mouth to protest. "I checked the records before we left the brig. You never were there to ask to see me me, or about the bail, which, by the way, had been reasonably enough that I wouldn't have had to spend two nights in a holding cell. So I'm asking you again, why did you neglect your job so badly?" He shook his head. "I should fire you, but then you'd just go off with whatever secrets you stole. May I remind you that there's no precedence case of a telepath getting even dragged to court over reading anyone's mind for any of the Outer Planets? Therefore, the best course of action for me would be to call Emma up and have her and Charles here just snatch whatever you're trying to hide directly from your mind. If you don't want to be completely honest with me, of course. It's up to you."

Janos swallowed audibly. It was not hard to guess that he could imagine what would happen if Erik 'had' Emma read his mind. She would go through every single one of his memories, searching until she was sure she knew every single bit of information Janos had sold or had been intending to sell. Charles knew, because that was exactly what he would do if asked.

"I was working with Marko for the last few months," Janos whispered. He was shaking a little, Charles noticed. "Is that what you wanted to hear? He was there because I told him about what you did to Sebastian. You should have known better than to mess with people from the Inner Planets and then have the audacity to return there. You should know that you can't do that to your betters and expect them not to do anything about you. Marko contacted me, said he knew how I felt about people like you, those who don't know their rightful place. You're the perfect example, really. And I always knew Emma had faked that will, even before I looked into her files! And just when I passed the info on to Marko, he shows up here!" He jabbed an accusing finger at Charles. "And suddenly, you're working against Marko in earnest instead of just shaving off at his profits here and there."

Instinctively, Charles reached out for Erik's shoulder to keep him seated and maybe even somewhat calm when he felt anger flare up in his mind. But Erik hadn't moved at all. He was still staring at Janos, his hands still folded on the desk. "So you passed on our bid to Marko, so he knew how much to bid to beat us by an inch?" he asked. His voice was icy. Charles half expected the metal beams in the floor beneath Janos to just disappear so the floor could swallow him. Nothing the like happened. "How? You weren't in any of the meetings."

"I proofread the contact to make sure it'll hold, legally," Janos shrugged. "But it's not like i couldn't just have asked some of the managers, really. There are a few who really like to talk."

Erik nodded. He had a few names on his mind that showed Charles that he believed Janos there. And he also planned to talk to them, later, when this all was over. "Why did you even work for me then? Just to get your revenge?"

"No, at first I thought you really would go on like Sebastian had," Janos said. "But you betrayed everything he stood for. You took the company apart, ruined it, you shut down all the profitable sectors, you even got rid of weapons right away!"

Erik's fingers twitched at the mention of the weapons. Remembering what Erik had told him about why Shaw had chosen to destabilize Erik's home world, he didn't even have to take a look into Erik's mind to see him wishing to mutilate the man in front of him. "The company today is making more profits than ever," Erik forced himself to say. "You can't tell me shutting down the weapons department was a bad decision in face of those facts." He took a deep breath, detaching his powers from where he had wrapped them around the structures below Janos.

"It's not the company I started working for and believed in," Janos said, his eyes flickering down to the floor, then back up to Erik again.

Erik sighed. "Just what do I do with you. I should just tell you to get out of my sight and better off planet, too, because you'll never get a job here again. But how can I know you don't have any more information to sell?" He paused, just for a moment, before his mind lit up with glee that soon found its way onto his face and turned into a downright terrifying smile, if Janos' expression was anything to go by. "Actually, I don't want to fire you. It'd be more beneficial to just tell everyone what you did and then let Emma have you. Work off your debt for the next two to ten years, no inhibitors allowed. And if you think about running, consider that I'll have you sued for everything Emma can come up with. Is that clear enough?"

Glumly, Janos nodded.

"Good," Erik leaned back in his seat. "In that case, you can leave now. Report back to Emma in the morning. And remember, no inhibitors."

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


The moment Janos turned, Charles' hand went up to his head, two fingers pressed against his temple and he closed his eyes for better concentration. He shut the connection to Erik off as well, needing his telepathy focused just on one mind protected by the newest model of state of the art inhibitors. Erik's threats had been all nice and well, but Charles thought there was a little more incentive needed in this case.

It took effort to push through the artificial shielding around Janos' mind. Charles hadn't done this in the last few years, though this time he didn't care to hide his intrusion. He wanted Janos to feel it. And he could feel it. The moment the shields shattered under the pressure Charles put on them, Janos stopped mid-step. Charles could feel his panic, his flight reflexes were the first thing he had to shut down if he wanted to talk. And even though he only had a few sentences to say, he did want to talk.

_I think you know who I am,_ Charles said into Janos' mind.  _And I just wanted you to know, if you ever cross me, or Erik, again, anything Erik or even Emma can do will, be the least of your problems. I just broke through the shields of your inhibitors. I don't even need to see you for that. Remember this before you make any move._  He let go of Janos again, but not before planting a mental command that would keep Janos from making any rash decisions concerning his life. From what Charles had seen, that one was needed. It would probably get him into trouble should it ever be discovered, but he couldn't even ignore this in a man who'd sold Erik to Kurt out of spite.

When Charles opened his eyes again, Janos was gone, the door closed behind him. Erik had turned his chair toward him and was looking very worried. "Are you okay?" he asked.

Charles nodded. "I'm fine." He still took the tissue Erik held out and dabbed his nose with it. He was bleeding a little. "Oh."

"Just what did you do?" Erik sighed, even though he was smiling a little like he knew he couldn't have stopped Charles anyway.

"I thought it would be a good idea to add to your threats," Charles answered. Now that he'd noticed the nosebleed, he was also noticing some other things, like how the ground felt like it was shaking. "Put some fear of me into him." He sighed and didn't resist when Erik pulled him onto his lap. "Oh dear, I think I somewhat overdid it. It used to be much easier to penetrate the shields of those damned inhibitors."

"Hush," Erik told him. He pressed a kiss to Charles' forehead. "You look horrible." For a moment, he hesitated. "If you don't feel like you can manage to get home right now, the couch here is all yours. It's not like I ever lack work to do, anyway."

Charles nodded, cuddling closer to Erik's chest. He wouldn't even mind sleeping right here for a bit. The last thing Charles felt before he dozed off were Erik's hands slip under him to pick him up.

 

**~*~*~**

 

Erik cast a look at Charles' sleeping form on the couch between writing two mails and shook his head with a smile. To think Charles had now behaved like the reckless one, without care for his own well-being and without showing any fear. Erik felt an immense second-hand pride when he thought about what Charles had done for him, that he'd even stood up against a man Erik knew he feared more than anyone. Emma's report on the meeting had helped with that as well. He might listen to Charles at some point in the near future and stop treating her like the enemy for that. At least she knew what he liked to hear.

Charles had now been sleeping for almost two hours, and despite his words, Erik was slowly running out of work. There were just so many mails one could read and write, so many reports to frown at. Soon, it would be time to wake Charles and head home. Raven had already threatened him to take a long weekend off, so Erik didn't suppose he would be coming in Monday. He wouldn't let her keep him out of the office tomorrow, however. It wasn't like he didn't know just how much work had gathered while he had been gone.

Another glance at Charles and a tiny smile later, Erik gave up on work. Instead, he opened a collection of recipes and started reading, trying to remember what tastes Charles liked and which he hated, planning dinner for the evenings to come.

It was nice to know that Charles didn't plan to go anywhere now, Erik thought with a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the last regular chapter, the two following will be short scenes set (a bit) later on. If there's anything you want to see in this, tell me now and I'll see what I can do.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is basically just a soft porn bonus chapter, so you can skip that if you don't like it. It's also grossly fluffy.

Ten days since they'd come back from the space station and Charles still woke up wondering if he'd ever get used to all this. This being Erik's arms wrapped around him on some mornings, or Erik's back pressed against his chest on others, when they woke up in the same bed. It was eating together what Erik had cooked and with what Charles had at least helped in the small, cozy kitchen. Thanks to the vacation Raven had forced Erik to take, they had been able to spend the last couple of days entirely in each other's presence. There was so much they had to catch up on after the past fifteen years, so much they had to relearn, so much to figure out in their relationship. It didn't feel like they wouldn't be able to work it out, but there was still quite a lot of things for them to do and talk about.

Charles could feel the steady flow of Erik's mind change pace, a sure indicator that he was about to wake up. He tightened his grip where his arm had been resting across Erik's upper body. "Good morning," he murmured against Erik's shoulder once he was sure he was awake enough to process words.

"Morning," Erik hummed back. He leaned more into Charles' embrace, enjoying the warmth and feeling too much to even think about turning around and giving Charles a kiss, never mind all the gentle mental nudges Charles sent."Soon," Erik murmured when he'd finally had enough of it. "Gimme a few more minutes."

Charles shook his head. "I'm not getting you to get up anytime soon, huh?" Charles chuckled.

"Why would you want to leave the bed anyway?" Erik stretched a little, as much as he dared without bothering Charles so much he might let go. "There's nothing we have to do today. Nothing urgent at least. So why not stay?"

Now, Charles was full on laughing. "I really should have known it was a bad idea to let Raven bully you into taking a vacation."

"What, no." Erik turned in Charles arms. His strategy was clear, distract Charles from whatever he wanted with kisses and cuddling, but Charles didn't mind. "I deserve a long vacation with you, we should have gotten away. Well, not off planet, of course, but somewhere Raven couldn't find me."

"What makes you think I wouldn't return her calls?" Charles grinned. He petted Erik's hair, eliciting happy sights from Erik every so often. "You're turning into a giant cat if you're staying this lazy."

"Oh, you're so cruel," Erik sighed, leaning into Charles' hand and closing his eyes again. "Mew," he added as an afterthought.

"Hm, but I really don't want a pet," Charles mused. His hand moved down to the nape of Erik's neck, where he started to rub circles into the skin.

"No?" From the way Erik's mind felt, Charles was almost convinced in another moment he'd start purring.

"No," Charles shook his head. "I'd rather have a boyfriend."

"A boyfriend, yeah?" Erik let out a low, playful growl. Charles knew what was about to come so he went willingly when Erik turned him onto his back and climbed on top of him, sealing the action with a kiss. "What could a boyfriend do for you that a cat couldn't?"

Charles hummed. He didn't need to think about it, but he wanted a little more time to run his hand up and down Erik's spine like he was. "Good question," he murmured. "I can get love, and cuddles, and a warm body next to me at night with a cat as well. So, what, aside from cleaning after yourself and feeding me, keeps me from just getting a real pet instead?"

Erik did his best to look hurt, or at least pout, but the little twitch of his lips and the spark in his eyes gave him away. "Would a cat do this?" he purred, slipping both hands under Charles' shirt to pull it up. In anticipation what Erik was planning to do next, Charles lifted his arms so he could pull the shirt off entirely. Once Charles' upper body was naked and the shirt tossed away, Erik bowed his head to press feathery kisses all over his chest. Charles sighed happily, carding his hands through Erik's hair again in further encouragement.

"Well?" Erik chuckled. "Don't you want to answer?" It was clear he didn't want Charles to answer, though, because as soon as Charles opened his mouth to reply, he licked a long, broad stripe from Charles' navel up to his collar bone that had Charles moan.

"Hm, no," Charles sighed when he had regained enough breath. "Less talking more kissing, please?"

Erik was only too happy to oblige. For the next couple of minute, he busied himself with kissing, licking and nipping at every inch of Charles' chest, his fingers trailing over the smooth skin there as well, slowly feeling out each bone and muscle. Charles could feel in Erik's mind how he was memorizing his body again, comparing it to what he could still remember from their teenage years. Soon enough, however, that line of thought stopped, as Erik concentrated solely on the here and now, Charles' skin under his fingers and his taste on his tongue. There was only a very faint undercurrent of lust in his thoughts still, making it clear to Charles that Erik was mostly content with feeling him all up. Not that Charles minded. This was pleasant enough and he himself was only too happy to feel up Erik's back at his leisure in the same manner, while at the same time losing himself in Erik's thoughts.

Only very slowly did Erik work his way down Charles' body. His flow of thought changed in pace, so it took Charles almost until Erik grabbed the hem of his shorts to realize that Erik was now very much on the lookout for sex. Charles raised his hips a little to indicate to Erik that he could just pull his shorts off like he'd done with his shirt, but Erik ignored it. Instead, he tugged the shorts down agonizingly slow, continuing to kiss and nip at Charles' hip bone like he had at his chest before.

"Erik," Charles moaned when he couldn't take the slow pace anymore. He could have sworn Erik was just seeking out any ever so small patch of skin to nip at just to tease him, but there was no indication from what he could see without diving deeper into his mind. For all Charles knew, Erik simply liked it and didn't realize that he was driving him mad by now. His fingers found their way into Erik's hair and he used that now to tug him in the direction of his penis.

Erik went willingly, kissing a slow trail from the base up the underside of the shaft, making Charles moan and precum bead at the tip. With the tip of his tongue, Erik licked it up. Carefully, he pulled Charles' foreskin back, before taking in the head of his penis. One of Charles' hands went up to his mouth, reflexively suppressing the loud moan that action coaxed out of him. He'd never liked to be loud in bed, even though he couldn't help and knew Erik  _liked_  him being loud. When he bit his finger to stop himself from a second, even louder moan, Erik looked up. "Shhhht," he whispered. The breath against Charles' penis made him shiver. "Nobody but me will hear you here, no matter how loud you are. Nobody will yell at you or anything. You're safe here." Charles would have been quicker to process the words if Erik had stopped running his clever fingers up and down his penis while he talked. Like this, though, there was a pause of several breathless moments, before Charles finally, a little reluctantly removed his hand from his mouth.

"Come here," he murmured, trying to pull Erik up to him by his shoulder. "I want to kiss you."

Erik crawled above Charles, until he was straddling his legs and most of his weight resting on his arms left and right of Charles' head. Charles slung his arms around Erik's neck so they could meet halfway for a heated kiss. At some point during that kiss, Charles had pulled Erik down on top of him enough to detach one hand from his neck and let it sneak in between them. With just as much care as Erik had shown earlier, he ran his fingers only very lightly over Erik's hard length, up to the head and then down again, sometimes pausing to trace the faint, frayed scar around the head, always paying close attention to how Erik was feeling as to not cause him any pain. "Lube," Charles stated in between two kisses, when he noticed his ministrations were starting to feel more and more uncomfortable for Erik. Without even looking, Erik summoned the small bottle of lube from his nightstand with his powers, holding it in the air for Charles to take.

His hand lubed up, Charles dared to tighten his grip around Erik, carefully spreading enough lube so it wouldn't dry up before they were done. Above him, Erik was shifting his weight a little so he could lift a hand to wrap around Charles' penis, too. For a while, Charles allowed himself to get lost in the movement of his hands and in Erik's pleasure. It was easy just to drift along, every now and then alter his movements according to what felt good. When he eventually felt an orgasm build, he wasn't sure whose it was, not that it really mattered. As much as he was feeling what Erik felt, they would most likely come at the same time anyway. He didn't even need Erik to jerk him off as well, never mind that he'd never him, as he took it for a simple gesture that Erik cared as well.

They came seconds apart in the end, as it took Charles' body a moment to catch up with his mind. Charles stroked Erik carefully through his orgasm, mindful not to change anything major about his pace or technique so not to disturb anything. After, the strain in Erik's arm from holing his weight up quickly became uncomfortable. Would the bed have been big enough for two, Charles was sure he'd just have rolled off him to lie down and catch his breath, maybe allowing Charles to curl up against his side and cuddle but nothing more. As it was, it took insistent pulling from Charles to get Erik to lie down on top of him, where Charles could wrap his arms around him and stroke soothingly up and down his spine.

They stayed like that for a moment, or three. From all the satisfied half-thoughts he was getting from Erik, Charles was almost sure he'd fallen asleep again. He was just contemplating if he should wake Erik up before he got too heavy or wait until he did and wake him then, when Erik turned his head to smile at him. "I love you."

Charles pressed a kiss to his nose, before he answered, "I love you, too."

"How about a shower now?" Erik asked, thinking of how sticky he felt. "As much as I'd like to stay in bed some more to cuddle, I doubt this position is comfortable for both of us long term."

"Now that you have me, you should really think about a new bed," Charles mused. "Why do you even have only a bed big enough for one?"

"Never needed a bigger one than this before you came," Erik admitted, stealing another kiss from Charles. "So, that bed you want, is that a conjugal bed or...?"

Charles raised an eyebrow. "Erik Lehnsherr, is this your idea of a proposal?" His voice might have been stern, but the mere thought of it made him giddy inside. He igored the tiny voice in the back of his head telling him that they hadn't even been back together for a month now, that it was much too soon for promises of "forever" and "happily ever after".

Erik shrugged. "Only if you say yes."

"You're aware that people will ask when and how you proposed and at least one of them, Raven, probably, will find out the truth," Charles remarked. "Do you want that?" But when he noticed Erik's face falling, he kissed him again, whispering, "Of course I want to marry you silly man."


End file.
